No better way to sum up this, the 5th commandment of continuous improvement, than advice from Weekend Update’s Financial Expert and Continuous Improvement guru, Oscar Rodgers… Fast forward to the 2:07 mark to jump right in or watch it all for fun. (You’ll want to sit through hulu’s 30 second commercial for this, it’s worth it.) Take it one step at a time:
Remember this commercial for Monster.com that debuted during the 1999 Super Bowl? When I grow up… I think this commercial is brilliant, clever and really funny. “I wanna be a yes man!”
Continuous improvement argues that it’s good to be a yes employee – given the right context – as stated in the second commandment:
Think “yes we can, if…” instead of “no we can’t, because…”
Thinking “yes we can, if…” does not turn you into the stereotypical yes man. It’s not about being a puppet. “Yes we can if…” is about perspective. It’s about making the effort to look at problems from a new vantage point. Instead of the most natural human approach — thinking of reasons why something can’t be done, start looking at scenarios where it can.
Children are especially good at “yes we can, if…” It’s the parents who play the “no you can’t, because…” card all of the time. Give your child a reason why they can’t play outside, build a fort out of the couch cushions, or eat a snack, and they will always invent scenarios where they can.
Seth Godin says this “yes we can” attitude is a strong characteristic of a Linchpin (someone indispensable to the success of a company). A Linchpin always finds a way to say, “yes, it can be done.”
If you want to be revered as indispensable – a Linchpin in your company – the next time you meet an opportunity where “no, because” is on your lips… reign it in with an experimental “yes, if…” and just see what happens.
(Be sure not to go Jim Carrey with the whole Yes Man thing though…)
The first and great commandment of continuous improvement:
Open your mind to change.
Take a look at the picture above and count all of the triangles. How many are there? One, two, five, eight?
In reality, there are no complete triangles at all. You may see them but they are simply not there. In this optical illusion, called the Kanizsa Triangle, your mind automatically draws the lines to create the illusion of a triangle.
Raed the fowloinlg txet and tehn tlel me yuor biran is not wniokrg bihned the sneces cntireag wrdos out of jriebsibh. Your mind sees what it wants to see, what is familiar. In this case: words. The first and last letters are in the right spots, but the middle is garbled. But still, you figured it out fairly easily.
There is an important lesson we learn about change from these mind tricks: when we are introduced to something new we tend to view it with pre-conceived expectations. It’s how the brain works. We fill in the blanks with what we expect will be there before it actually happens.
When we are introduced to change our thought patterns automatically start accepting or rejecting it based on pre-conceived notions we have accumulated over a lifetime. This is particularly true when working through the change required to embrace continuous improvement.
To be successful we need to first understand that we are viewing change through a lens; only then can we choose to look beyond these filters. In other words, we need to open our vision to the possibilities of the new, recognizing that our minds might be making mountains out of molehills, or in this case, crafting triangles out of thin air.
Have you ever found yourself asking…What does continuous improvement actually mean? Well it could mean a lot of things to a lot of different people and companies. But generally speaking, continuous improvement is the effort to continually improve the business processes, products, and services a company provides.
While there are many methodologies such as Lean and Six Sigma (along with their respective principles and tools) that can help companies improve processes, the heart of continuous improvement is people and culture.
Take a look at the Ten Commandments of Continuous Improvement below and you’ll see that each guiding principle is driven by human behavior – not technical knowledge, statistics or tools.
1. Open your mind to change
2. Think, “Yes we can, if…” not “No we can’t, because…”
3. Always attack processes, not people
4. Seek simple solutions instead of complex solutions
5. If it’s broken, stop and fix it
6. Use creativity, not capital: “wits over wallets”
7. Problems are opportunities in disguise
8. Fix the root cause: ask “why” five times (instead of who)
9. The wisdom of many is better than the knowledge of one
10. There is no final destination on the improvement journey
While each of these commandments is essential to building a continuous improvement culture, number ten is the one that puts the continuous in just plain improvement. The journey never ends.
Over the coming weeks I’ll be diving into these commandments, posting my thoughts and examples as I find them in business and everyday life.
Ron Pereira at Gemba Academy produced a nice video summarizing these commandments. This video was the inspiration to write this series of posts. After a 2 minute introduction to Kaizen, he jumps right in to the Ten.
