Kaizen for the Workplace and Personal Spaces

The strategy of Kaizen can be used in a workplace or even in the home. This is a great post for the beginner or the advanced Lean user. I would recommend checking out the article and exploring how Lean can help your company.

A Japanese management strategy called Kaizen roughly translates to “continuous slow improvement.” In the corporate world, it’s an efficiency and defect-proofing system often used on factory floors. But Kaizen emphasizes the well-being of the employee, working smarter, not harder and developing best practices so that workers don’t have to think. As such, Kaizen is an ideal approach to improve one’s personal workflow.

Getting Things Done with Kaizen

Getting Things Done methods work well within the practice of Kaizen. Kaizen would be the overall strategy, and GTD a collection of tactics for process improvement. To apply GTD in a Kaizen way, you might choose a few related ideas from GTD that will help you immediately in areas where you need the most work. Then you’d implement one tactic every week for a month. You’d work on that one tactic— 43 folders, say— for a week, consciously using it and thinking about it. After a week, you’d have it down to the point where you don’t have to think about it anymore. The next week, you’d move on to the next device while continuing to use the one you just mastered.

That way, you’re continually improving your process, painlessly, without having to interrupt much of your present workflow or take anything new by storm. There’s the thing with Kaizen: you have to stick to it. It doesn’t necessarily require a huge amount of discipline front loaded, but you have to hold on to each small gain you make. Since each step is a small increment, that’s easy enough to do.

Kaizen in practice

Click to view for a good way to track where your day goes”….More at Practice your personal Kaizen  Lifehacker

We also carry a great package of Videos and DVDs that can really help you accelerate your lean projects. Click here

Similar Posts

Additional Resources