Continuous Improvement Mindset: Kaizen starting point

Continuous Improvement Mindset

VadiK

Inventor

Author

Founder

Continuous Improvement Mindset is Kaizen's starting point.

Kaizen means continuous improvement.

Kaizen strategy calls for never-ending efforts for improvement involving everyone in the organization.

Kaizen Mindset sets the right mindset and business environment in a Continuous Improvement Firm (CIF).

Key Attitudes
of the Continuous Improvement Mindset

If you stop learning, you stop creating history and become history. If you are not getting better, you are getting worse.

~ Vadim Kotelnikov

→ Everything can and should be improved.

(Some Japanese managers go as far as to say to their subordinates, "Regard whatever you do now as the 'worst' way to do your job.")

→ The emphasis is on process – establish a way of thinking oriented at improving processes, and a management system that supports and acknowledges people's process-oriented efforts for improvement.

→ Don't criticize, suggest an improvement.

→ Think of how to improve it instead of why it can't be improved.

Mediocrity competes with others. Greatness competes with itself.

~ Vadim Kotelnikov

→ Not a single day should go by without some kind of improvement being made somewhere in the company.

Strive to be better than what you were yesterday, not someone else.

→ Imagine the ideal customer experience and strive to provide it.

→ Develop customer-driven strategy for improvement – any management activity should eventually lead to increased customer satisfaction.

→ Quality first, not profit first – an enterprise can prosper only if customers who purchase its products or services are satisfied.

Don't treat competitors as a curse, threat them as stimuli of your innovativeness.

~ Vadim Kotelnikov

→ Think beyond common sense. Challenge assumptions. Even if something is working, try to find the ways to make it work even better. Ask searching questions.

→ See problem solving as cross-functional collaborative and systemic approach.

→ Recognize that any corporation has problems and establish a corporate culture where everyone can freely admit these problems and suggest improvement.

→ Start with scarcity. It's hard to see the need for Kaizen when resources are plentiful.

→ When there is a worker or supplier performance problem, don't replace them. Keep them and help them improve instead.

→ Once you've made a radical improvement (Kaikaku), follow it up with a series of incremental improvements (Kaizen)... More

6Ws of the Kaizen

Kaizen and Management

Kaizen and Innovation

Kaizen Implementation