About Fidelity Investments

Fidelity Investments is the largest and best-known mutual fund manager in the United States. Fidelity is also the leading provider of retirement plan services to corporations and the nation’s second-largest discount brokerage firm.

At Fidelity Investments, Kaizen Involves

Top management commitment to continuous improvement (Kaizen).

Identifying the corporate goal and the standards that define it.

Measuring progress toward the goal.

Raising standards after old standards are routinely met.

Recognizing problems and needs, rather than denying them, so they can be addressed.

Listening closely to customers and treating employees like customers.

Gradually improving all processes, operations, departments and professional areas.

Working together across departments and company lines, to ensure that quality and service goals are met.

Developing employees and helping them to develop themselves, so they can help meet company's gradually rising standards.

Top Management Commitment

Fidelity’s practice of Kaizen began with the company’s Chairman and CEO, Edward C. Johnson III. A long-time student of eastern philosophy and religion, Johnson became interested in Japanese management practices and discovered Kaizen.

“Kaizen means,” he said,“ that if you sweep the building you always want to try to do a better job – and in a shorter time.” Johnson applied the philosophy to his company as a basic way of doing business. He took every opportunity to communicate his belief in Kaizen to Fidelity employees to make it a corporate religion and create an environment of continuous improvement.

"Kaizen is a practical way for us to achieve our corporate goal," says Johnson. "The ideas is sometimes described as "making small, incremental improvements in all areas of the company over an extended period of time." That's part of it, but there's a good deal more.

Corporate Commitment

Fidelity's commitment to Kaizen is reflected in its performance management and compensation systems. Each fall, Fidelity companies establish business goals for the coming business year. These goals are tiered through the company's various divisions down to the individual manager level.

Employee Ownership

Fidelity fundamentally believes that employees practice Kaizen most enthusiastically when they feel a deep sense of ownership in the work.

Fidelity fosters this feeling of ownership by dividing power in the company among small divisions (each called a company or a business unit) with aggressive entrepreneurial leadership.

Each of these Fidelity companies is responsible for its own management systems, its own strategies and activities – and its own results.

Corporate Quality – a Kaizen Promotion Team

Fidelity defines quality as "How we organize, operate, evaluate, and continually improve all aspects of our business to maximize customer satisfaction and profitability over the long term."

Corporate management promotes Kaizen by a small staff of people who work full time to assure that employees hear the continuous improvement message on a regular basis. This department, which is called Corporate Quality, supports Fidelity's commitment to organizational learning.

The sharing of best practices within the company happens in a number of ways.