Kaizen is a Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement processes that involves every employee in all functional areas of an organization. Incremental improvements, or “baby steps,” are made by teams or individuals on a regular, even daily, basis to reduce steps, redundancies, and waste.
In the U.S. we often prefer immediate gratification, innovation, double digit growth, and grand overhauls. Bold action and decisiveness are seen as evidence of strong leadership. New leaders will make sweeping changes by bringing in new teams, processes, systems, and tools.
I’m sure you’ve experienced this first-hand. I’ve seen this many times when there’s a merger or acquisition of a company. To satisfy investors, a company may take quick action to reduce seemingly redundant positions, excessive labor, and extra facilities. Systems are centralized and processes revamped for consistency across all business units.
While decisiveness is admirable, leadership sometimes overcorrects and ignores change management Rule #1 - Don’t break anything!
There once was an infrastructure project funded to replace an old access road to a bridge. The old road was shut down and the construction crew started ripping it up. However, they hadn’t built the new road or even a temporary lane first. No one could access the bridge, which disrupted transportation, and you can guess the rest.
Under stress, “Ready, aim, fire” becomes “Ready, fire, aim” or worse, “Fire, fire, fire.” There was a major company that when it purchased a smaller company, subsumed all the acquired company’s marketing roles, and shut down all marketing tools without replacing them. The smaller company soon began missing sales forecasts and morale suffered. I don’t want to disclose any more details about why such decisions were taken or the chaos that was caused, suffice to say that choices were uninformed if not shortsighted, and the results were tragic.
In my experience, especially under tight deadlines or extreme pressure, one should never skip steps. Timelines can be compressed and processes expedited, but skipping steps will only cost more and take longer. There are four main steps in process improvement: 1) Plan, 2) Test, 3) Evaluate, 4) Act.
Planning should be thoughtful, intentional, inclusive, and exhaustive. Seek participation from anyone and everyone who may have a stake in the process – its inputs, its work product, and its output. Try to punch holes in the plan and find the weak links before rolling it out. Measure twice, cut once.
Next, roll it out to a select group and test the process or tool on a contained and inconsequential project to see if the plan holds up. Get feedback from all stakeholders and evaluate the plan – modify as needed.
When asking for initial ideas and testing the new plan, several people will ask if this is the new process and should they start using this new tool or process immediately. When presented with a shiny new toy, it’s human nature to want to play with it. No! Nothing changes until something changes. Teams should continue to operate the same way until an official roll-out and announcement is made.
Many companies focus on the new process plan but overlook the rollout plan. Coaching, follow-up, and different methods of communication are necessary – repetition, repetition, repetition. There should be written reference materials that are both distributed and posted where they can be easily referenced. There should be group presentations and smaller group or individual tutorials. There may even be “how to” videos posted.
Any change will be awkward at first. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Rarely do people purposely sabotage an effort, but often people forget what they’re supposed to do or how they’re supposed to do it. With support and practice, all should be well. Try new things, just don’t break anything.
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