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    Japanese businesses from Toyota to Mitsubishi Corporation, Honda Motor, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Sony, SoftBank, Nissan, Hitachi, Panasonic, Toshiba, Canon Inc. and so countless Fortune 500 Japanese companies are known for philosophy – Kaizen.
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According to Masaaki Imai, author of Kaizen: The Key To Japan’s Competitive Success, “The starting point for improvement is to recognize the need. This comes from the recognition of a problem. If no problem is recognized, there is no recognition of the need for improvement. Complacency is the archenemy of kaizen.”  Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy that talks about “continuous improvement”. It is a combination of two words, ” Kai” meaning “change”, and “zen” meaning “good”. Although its origins can be traced back to the rebuilding effort that followed World War II, it became popular in the West after Japanese organizational theorist Masaaki Imai released his book Kaizen: The Key To Japan’s Competitive Success in 1986.  If you check any successful business, they are built on philosophies and principles. A company without principles is like a ship without an anchor. Many successful organizations in the West and also in Nigeria have attributed their success to emulating this philosophy called Kaizen. In this article, I will break down how you can apply this philosophy to your business and watch you grow.
  • Address Friction Points
Kaizen aims to look around and improve things. It is all about looking around at what competitors aren’t doing right and addressing their failures. For example, the emailing industry was a difficult space to be in. Users complained about the snail-paced speed of sending emails. In fact, it was cumbersome to operate. In the early 2000s, when emails were a new thing, it was overwhelming and users would have to open a new page and enter addresses manually to send emails. It took the complaints of a user to get Google Inc. to create its Gmail. Google’s Gmail came with supersonic speed, its interface was easy to use, and it became the exact opposite of existing brands. 
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According to Google co-founder, Larry Page in the April Fool press, the world was informed that the inspiration for Gmail came from a user who complained about the poor quality of existing email. “She kvetched about spending all her time filing messages or trying to find them,” Page said. “And when she’s not doing that, she has to delete email like crazy to stay under the obligatory four-megabyte limit. So she asked, ‘Can’t you people fix this?’” Gmail effortlessly crushed its competitors with its lightning-fast service, huge amounts of storage, email auto-completion and tidy interface.
  • Make Room For Side Projects
The kaizen philosophy states that humans and groups must create a room that stimulates deep thinking and creativity which is the very foundation of continuous improvement. According to the kaizen philosophy, the company must create a safe space for creativity outside the day-to-day operations of the business. It is like having a department of “new projects” or a think-tank group whose sole purpose is to spearhead innovations within the company. However, to make this possible, businesses must create an opportunity for their employees to execute side projects. It must empower its employees to think outside the box rather than being regimented by office bottlenecks and protocols. Studies have shown that doing the same thing, day in and day out can put a real damper on creative thinking. If you’re the boss, consider giving your employees a designated amount of time to spend on non-day-job projects.
  • Self-reflect
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The kaizen philosophy is all about breaking the norms and not accepting the status quo. But to identify areas for growth, you have to be willing to acknowledge your pain points. Businesses built on kaizen find time to reflect, especially its leaders and founders. First, kaizen is all about looking within and assessing if your company is reaching its goals and objectives. The consequence of not looking within and reflecting is that you might fail to rebrand amid prevailing changes. You might find your business living and operating in obsolescence. Times will always change, and change is constant, hence the kaizen philosophy calls for asking hard questions about improving with the times. Most founders often make the mistake of sticking with business plans they formulated decades ago when they first began, even when such thoughts have no place in the modern business world. Therefore, Kaizen’s philosophy is all about disrupting the status quo.
  • Be Persistent 
Kaizen is all about developing staying power. It is all about growing and stretching patiently and at the same time being consistent and persistent. Kaizen’s philosophy is all about being laser-focused on improvement. The Japanese belief system asserts that there is nothing that can not be improved upon. This can only be possible when the entrepreneur finds the momentum to do so. Companies that are focused on being persistent in innovation and provision of the best customer service will naturally have an advantage over others. Featured Image Source: www.travelbusinessu.com
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This article was first published on 27th April 2022

nnaemeka-emmanuel

Nnaemeka is an academic scholar with a degree in History and International Studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He is also a creative writer, content creator, storyteller, and social analyst.

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