Lean Mastery Collection

by Jeffrey Ries

  Foster a “Yes Culture” by Incorporating a Win-Win Attitude.

  If you’ve worked with a “no” culture organization in the past, it can be frustrating to work in an atmosphere where you are told something isn’t possible, even when you know it is. You may have used the exact system, procedure or technology in the past only to be told that it is not possible to use it. Would you like to foster such an atmosphere of negativity within your startup?

  Kill the “no” culture if you want your business to grow and thrive in the long run. Train your employees to say “yes” whenever they can. It can be for everything from embracing new ideas to helping a business grow and succeed in the long run. A “yes” culture is based on the philosophy that improvements, changes and helping other people succeed go together.

  Don’t Overlook Details.

  Use the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule to dramatically enhance or improve your results. It is a good strategy to get the best results by making small efforts. Small business and startup founders should encourage their employees to seek big wins where the startup can gain the biggest efforts with the smallest and quickest possible efforts. However, this doesn’t mean you should ignore the smaller details. Remember, details can make or break your business. A spectrum of industries ranging from software development to manufacturing to those operating within the service sector can benefit big time from making small changes or fixing small details. For instance, a tiny change in the manufacturing process can cuts wastage by 4 percent can translate into a 4 percent decrease in raw material cost. Over a period of time, this 4 percent can add up to a huge amount.

  Make Continuous and Consistent Improvement a Part of the Organization’s Culture.

  In certain organizations, improvements only happen at fixed times during the year. Let your startup not follow a similar culture where changes and enhancements are only encouraged during specific times of the year. Don’t restrict improvements, process changes and system enhancements to certain times of the year or annual meetings. Make it a part of your daily organizational culture. Build your startup an improvement driven entity right from the beginning.

  Your workers should be excited about coming to work every day. They should be driven by the goals, values, and philosophy of improvement to keep making changes on a continual basis within the organization. Employees will be enthusiastic about coming to work each day when they find a more efficient way of doing things, and they realize that they are free to implement this effective way of doing things. They should be encouraged to add to small victories and be given the freedom to make decisions based on what they feel is right for the organization’s overall quality control, development, productivity, and profitability.

  At times, even the most unexpected workers may surprise with their massive gains that can enhance your company profits big time. When this happens, it’s a true win-win scenario for any organization, which is exactly what Kaizen is all about. There are no easy fixes in Kaizen. The simple yet cutting-edge Japanese philosophy doesn’t have a magic bullet that will eliminate your problems or make challenges disappear in a shot. Since Kaizen means “change for the better,” its simplicity makes it special because is about constant improvement, even if it is a slight improvement.

  Build Your Startup Around the Kaizen Spirit.

  Everyone loves stories of quick and radical changes that produce instant results. However, a more doable and effective approach involves bringing about organizational and individual changes through a series of tiny and systematic steps.

  The way it works on a psychological level is that radical changes set off our brain’s fear and response system, thus shutting our capacity to think in a clear and creative manner. On the other hand, tinier and quieter steps prevent stress, anxiety, and fear. It doesn’t trigger our brain’s alarm or reflexive defense mechanism. Our creative, logical and cognitive processes flow easily when there is a lasting and power-packed change in a gradual and incremental manner. This is why the adage “slow and steady wins the race” holds weight.

  Similarly, constant repetition makes it simpler to transform activities into habits and eventually lifestyle. The act of doing tiny tasks gives your mind a strong sense of accomplishment. Keep making small and gradual changes to processes and systems on a daily basis instead of making radical innovations that can scare you. When you make small and gradual efforts, your mental blindfolds are overcome and work-related anxiety takes over to prevent you from wholeheartedly embracing change. Gut-wrenching change can overwhelm the best of people. Think about major changes and the resulting challenges of the changes faced by organizations by Ford and NASA.

  Start applying these actionable Kaizen pointers in your startup right away to witness big results in small ways:

  1. Product and Service Innovation

  One of the best ways to keep improving upon your product or service is to stay curious and observe the tiniest of details. This practice alone will offer you a huge edge over competitors. Learn from frustration, pain points, disappointments and failures instead of letting them get the better of you. Learn to be curious, keep learning and ask questions all the time. Cross collaborate with startups that are similar to yours.

  2. Quality Improvement

  Always be on the watch out for warning signs that allows for confidential and secure reporting of mistakes. Every process must be tracked, even something that is working wonderfully well in favor of the organization. Discuss systems and procedures, and don’t duck bad news. View it as an opportunity for change and reinvention. Overconfidence is shunned by the Kaizen philosophy. One must never assume that they know everything or that there is nothing left for them to learn. Improvement and change should be continuous. Pixar is open to suggestions from everyone from the CEO to the newest employee on board.

  3. Cost Cutting

  Invite employees for suggestions on taking small steps to slash costs, while being open and receptive to a bunch of well-meaning and relevant suggestions. Offer small yet meaningful rewards as positive reinforcement for cost-cutting suggestions. It will be worth it if you manage to hit upon that one idea or suggestion that can help you cut costs dramatically. For instance, Continental Airlines offers its employee a $65 bonus for higher performance, American Airlines solicited suggestions to save a minimum of $25 and so on.

  4. Boosting Employee Morale and Overall Job Satisfaction

  A happy employee translates into increased productivity and higher profits. Create small gestures of demonstrating respect and gratitude towards your employees. Make them feel a valuable part of the organization. Show respect, interest, and curiosity towards what they are doing. Always, always greet your employees with their name. Pay careful and mindful attention during conversations and interactions. Attempt to find out more about the fears, insecurities, dreams, goals, objectives, challenges and aspirations of your employees by asking more open-ended questions! Ensure you communicate with them on a regular basis. Invite them over for a chat in your office and discuss how things are going or if they have any suggestions for improvement.

  Did you know that Zappos hires only people with a highly positive attitude? Hell, they even ask their drivers for their views about candidates they picked and dropped to gain insights about how positive they are. Also, medical clinics are known to ask receptionists for ideas about improving overall customer service.

  5. Increasing Sales

  How can Kaizen be used for driving sales and making the process of increasing profits more effective? Motivate your sales staff through guided imagery, visualization, vision boards, and mind sculpturing. Keep reminding them and yourself about the organization’s mission and values. Volvo has a highly effective practice for boosting employee morale. It circulates letters from satisfied customers to employees to make them feel an important part of customer satisfaction process.

  Innovation in large organizations and startups is driven by problem-solving, creativity, break-through thinking, problem-solving, inspiration, discipl
ine and much more. If you think about it, inspiration is much likelier to develop and strike through the habit of continuously paying attention to and observing your venture’s tiniest moments. Contrary to popular perception, creativity isn’t some flash of a lightning moment. It is a result of careful and conscious activity. Silly mistakes, trivial issues, and even boredom can lead to innovative and new ideas. Train your employees to respond to their curiosity. Ask more open-ended questions, and be patient in your quest for answers.

  For instance, James Fargo of American Express was simply frustrated with cash and card processes while traveling. This led to the invention of the American Express Travelers’ Check. Train your employees to use their boredom and frustration for channelizing change.

  Similarly, UK based scientist Shashikant Phadnis discovered a sweetener by accident when he was asked to “test” a chemical, which he misheard as “taste.” Mistakes and accidents are a part of the organization’s evolution process.

  Kaizen is the universal desire of workers to feel like an integral part of an organization and engaged. Whether it is related to innovation, driving results or productivity, key personnel, and startup founders should solicit ideas, discuss them and express gratitude for them. Give your employees time, and demonstrate an interest in knowing what they are doing periodically.

  The key for Kaizen success at an individual level involves starting and developing internal conversations within the mind. It also involves explicitly jotting down and tracking your progress, while pursuing small, non-threatening and actionable steps in a gradual manner. This can include visualizing oneself in the state of results you want to accomplish for the startup. It can be repeating positive and powerful affirmations or statements to yourself just to reinforce the idea within your subconscious mind similar to persuasive advertising that seeks to hammer a point into your subconscious until your actions are guided by the firmly embedded thought.

  This can begin with devoting a minute a day towards the pursuit of focusing on the tiniest things along even if they seem absolutely ridiculous. It makes the change pleasant, effective and simple in the long haul. Even during crisis situations, the philosophy of Kaizen helps in breaking down large and seemingly insurmountable tasks into baby steps.

  Chapter Five: Idea-Sharing and Kaizen Boards

  One of the most important aspects of Kaizen is idea-sharing to make every employee feel a valued part of the organization, which makes creating an idea-sharing important for any startup or small business. How do you manage and document these ideas before they are lost? How can these ideas be used for reference? What are the different idea management systems that can be used to leverage the power of your employees’ ideas? Here are some ideas for managing your startup's idea-sharing by using the power of Kaizen boards.

  A Kaizen board is nothing but a visual tool that keeps track of every idea for improvement and enhancement of processes gathered throughout the organization and later helps analyze the status of these ideas by tracking them through improvement processes. Every employee is encouraged to be a part of the improvement process to give the business an edge over competitors. As a startup, you can visualize ongoing and planned improvements for giving yourself a clear way to track progress through the implementation of ideas. This way, you know which ideas work as well those that do not.

  I know some organizations where they have a dedicated idea-sharing day every week, where employees are encouraged to share their ideas for improvement and enhancement. These ideas are recorded on the Kaizen board and immediately implemented within the next few days. People are asked to record their progress post the idea implementation on the board to witness real, tangible results of the idea-sharing process. This also motivates employees to know that they are a part of the idea-sharing process and makes them contribute even more ideas and feel a valued part of the organization.

  Think about a hectic day where you are having a supremely productive meeting. This is a team meeting where everyone has shared some amazing ideas and insights about working smart and making the process more efficient. You know you can increase productivity and get a lot more done by implementing these ideas. Now, a couple of weeks pass and none of the ideas or suggestions are implemented. There is another weekly meeting to discuss ideas. Team members come together again to enthusiastically share even more ideas. All that’s done is sharing ideas without actually implementing these valuable ideas because somewhere along the way, these ideas are lost.

  This is exactly where a Kaizen board can step in and fill the gap. I know a lot of startups and small businesses think this to be a lot of work (keeping a dedicated board for ideas) though it doesn’t seem like any real work. However, an idea board can get the entire team together to turn in great ideas into actionable affairs, which improve the group, team of business’ overall deliverability. As long as the entire organization is committed to reviewing the Kaizen board as a team, and gives it priority over other work, a Kaizen board is capable of helping you transform ideas and vision into reality.

  Kaizen boards come in a variety of sizes and forms. One way to come up with suggestions for improvement or quality control of processes is to list the problems your startup is facing on a large sheet of paper. It can be anything from high marketing or promotional costs to low customer satisfaction to increased manufacturing defects–just about anything. Allow every employee to offer solutions to these problems by brainstorming. The “before and after” image forms can work brilliantly for problem-solution brainstorming.

  One of the biggest advantages of Kaizen boards is that they are public and accessible to every employee, not just a few key decision makers. This way, every employee feels a part of the decision making process. You may not have considered a problem where a competitor has a clear edge over you. For example, they may have created a solid social media promotion strategy that may have led to reduced marketing and promotional costs. A social media savvy employee may have noticed this and suggested that to keep your marketing and promotional costs low, as a startup you should build a strong, loyal social media community through engagement and interaction with customers. When this idea is accessible to everyone, it becomes easier to implement it. Keep your Kaizen board transparent, open and accessible. Unlike some companies which are secretive about their improvement and change implementations, ensure that everyone has access to these ideas to facilitate quicker, easier and a more seamless implementation.

  With Kaizen boards, as a startup, you can bring out the creative talents of employees with your organization. Generally, when there are problems or defects, we are quick to blame other people for it. At times, we’ll pretend like it didn’t happen at all. This goes against the Kaizen approach. Each of these mistakes must be brought out into the open so that they turn into learning experiences. There are plenty of hidden opportunities for improvement in these mistakes, and hiding them only deprives your team of an opportunity to learn and improve.

  Whenever you are an employee makes a mistake, ensure that you accept it and share it with everyone as a learning. Employees should be encouraged to share their mistakes with each other as a tool for facilitating continuous changes and improvements to drive home the Kaizen philosophy. Even when you as a key decision maker makes a mistake, call a meeting and discuss it in detail with your employees.

  This is one of the most effective ways to bring about change and improvement, which can offer you a competitive edge over other similar businesses. Process improvement or enhancement happens only when mistakes are brought to light, and ideas/suggestions are offered to enhance these processes. This optimizes errors and boosts productivity to give you a clear competitive edge over similar businesses.

  Even if something is working well for you, someone who is closely working on the process and systems can come up with a better or more efficient way to do it. This helps optimize your productivity, profits and results to give you an edge over competitors who may be stuck with the same old ways of doing things.

 
Startups are a wonderful platform for practicing Kaizen because, by their nature, there are no set systems or processes in place. They are innovative, breakthrough and cutting-edge, which means you can employ plenty of new ways to do things which gives you a clear edge over other established businesses that have been doing the same thing for several years. You have the opportunity of inventing new systems and processes to bring about breathtaking results. Kaizen boards are powerful tools to help to keep track of your organization’s progress in an easy to use and highly visual manner. It is a record of your current and future Kaizen efforts to help you stay on track with the suggested changes.

  Understand that more than anything else, Kaizen is a mentality. It isn’t as much a method as it is a way of life. It is the way you approach your work through continuous training, analysis, experimentation and data-channelized decision making. If you are practicing continuous and consistent improvement, Kaizen is firmly embedded in all aspects of life.

  The Job Methods Improvement Model

  This is another popular idea documenting the process that involves breaking down each job or task into its basic components. Once that’s done, the task is improved by removing, combining, reorganizing and simplifying the process. Later, change management is practiced by proposing these ideas to the boss. Finally, the improvement impact is measured through a set of predefined criteria such as quality, safety, quantity, and cost. The JMT method is about identifying new ideas and insights, and different ways of practicing things.

  As a startup, look for small ideas that can be improved upon gradually instead of attempting to give an entire department or business a makeover because something isn’t working in your favor. You can’t plan an entire department layout in a day. However, small changes can be implemented on a daily basis. Don’t run after a big installation or new equipment fitting. A startup doesn’t require major changes or improvements. There are hardly any systems in place currently. This is the time to set big systems and make small changes.