For Those Who Have A Complicated Relationship With Feedback
Sara Ismail-Beigi Bartlett speaks with guests about their ideas, perspectives, and best practices regarding feedback. For some, this process can be alarming, but it is essential and a key basis for improvement.
In this new episode Sara shares a business bite with us. A management philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement through small incremental changes referred to as Kaizen. It originated in Japan after World War II and has become a core principle in lean manufacturing and business management worldwide. Kaizen is applied in various areas such as production lines and customer service teams to improve efficiency and enhance processes. To implement Kaizen, it is important to encourage collaboration and a mindset of continuous improvement. Small manageable improvements over time lead to significant change and progress. Subscribe to the podcast for new episodes weekly!
Welcome to Business Bites. My name is Sara. This is the podcast for busy professionals who want the quick hits of business terminology, historical context, and strategies for integration. Today, we're exploring Kaizen, a concept that can transform the way that you approach continuous improvement.
Kaizen is a Japanese word coming back to the meaning of improvement. As a management philosophy, it refers to a set of practices aimed at continuously improving processes, products, and services by making small, incremental changes. Essentially, it's what are the small steps we can take over time instead of large, big sweeping changes all at once.
Kaizen as a term first integrated a lot of corporate America and the work world after World War II, where Japan was heavily influenced by American management practices for the need for efficient production techniques. It was popularized by Japanese companies like Toyota and has since become a core principle in lean manufacturing and business management worldwide. As a terminology, again, it is a way of thinking about continuous improvement and how we take those steps to improve things over time.
For example, let's say you work in a manufacturing organization and you are trying to implement changes on your production line. If you were an organization using Kaizen, you would regularly review and refine the production line by making small changes like adjusting machine settings or improving the workflow, changing the way the machines were laid out to incorporate how can we reduce waste over time and increase efficiency.
Or let's say you're on a customer service team and you're looking to use Kaizen to improve your processes by gathering feedback, making small adjustments to their procedures. Over time, they can improve and enhance customer service that's received over time. Again, small incremental changes can make a big impact.
If you want to start by using Kaizen as a part of your process, there are two things to consider. First, encourage other people to get involved with you. Small steps are easier if you have other folks on board with you. How can you encourage a mindset of continuous improvement where lots of individuals are coming up with insights, suggestions, and you think of ways to integrate them and identify areas of enhancement? Again, if everyone's working together, it's going to go faster.
The second component to remember is that when you are implementing incremental changes, it may feel like change isn't actually happening, but small manageable improvements help us make that change over time, rather than, again, making sweeping large efforts. This makes it easier for us to track progress and adjust as needed.
This has been Sara with Business Bites. You can reach me at [email protected]. We would love to hear from you on what other terminology you'd like bite-sized. As always, give us a quick rating on your platform of choice, and share this podcast with a friend. We'll see you next time.