The Secret of Kaizen
Kaizen is the Japanese word for “improvement”. The Japanese began using the Kaizen philosophy of making small improvements right after World War II. This philosophy has been behind their success in the auto industry and has since spread to businesses all around the world.
The philosophy of Kaizen is very simple and very powerful, yet it’s “invisibility” makes it something that most people completely overlook. It can be a tool that completely revolutionizes your business and your life if you apply it properly.
The basic concept behind is to simply focus on making small but regular improvements to something on a continuous basis. Most of us especially raised in the North American culture have been conditioned to value quick revolutionary change but completely overlook slow but stead evolutionary change.
I’ll use my Blog as an example to illustrate how I use the Kaizen philosophy as a secret to success. Most of my readers who have been following my Blog for a while know that I had a Blog Re-Design done which was launched on June 5th. The look of the Blog prior to the re-design was COMPLETELY different to the look I have now. The color scheme totally changed, the layout completely changed, and frankly you’d have to be blind not to notice the difference.
Because of the drastic change it is easy to see what I did to improve my Blog that day, so many people noticed that change. I got comments from people congratulating me and I got emails from people telling me how much they liked the new look of my site. This is what I call revolutionary change.
Revolutionary change is great and once in a while it is needed, but the primary reason that my Blog continues to grow on a daily basis and my income continues to grow has absolutely nothing to do with revolutionary change! It has everything to do with evolutionary change.
I work on my Blog every single day. Even if you don’t see an article published on a given day, I’m still working ON the Blog in the background. Let me give you an example. A few days back I was thinking about some of the articles I’ve written in the past during the initial months after launching my Blog when it wasn’t getting a lot of traffic. I feel that there is a lot of value in the content that I wrote there but it was probably missed by most people as my Blog wasn’t getting that much traffic back then, and a lot of Blog subscribers just read what’s new and don’t really go digging throught the archives.
So I started thinking about how I could solve that problem a few days ago. I wasn’t thinking in revolutionary terms, but rather in evolutionary terms. Meaning, I already have an archive so if people want to read my older content they can just look in there, right? Wrong. As a Kaizen thinker, you have to think in terms of small improvements. I asked myself “How can I make it just a little bit easier for people to connect with my older content?” or “How can I increase the chances that someone will read an older article I wrote even by just 1%?”
That’s how I think. That’s the Kaizen way.
So I went looking for a solution that would help that just by 1% (or more). What I found and implemented was a simple Wordpress plugin which indexes your article database and creates a listing of Similar Posts which relate to the current article you’re looking at. Here’s a screenshot of what that looks like at the bottom of each of my articles:
How many of you noticed that little change I made? I’m sure a few of you did, and most of you probably didn’t. Even if you did, you probably never really gave it a second thought. You might have even thought that perhaps it was always there.
Here’s my point: Unlike the Blog Re-design, I never got any comments or emails sent to me congratulating me on improving my Blog by 1%. Why?
Think about that for a second.
The reason why is because we are conditioned to value, celebrate and reward revolutionary change and to basically ignore evolutionary change. The Kaizen Secret is all about valueing, celebrating and rewarding yourself for SMALL changes. It’s what I do on this Blog and it’s why my Blog is growing daily while a lot of other Bloggers are stagnating or going backwards. They’re desperately trying to find the next revolutionary idea that’s going to skyrocket their Blogs to success while I’m just slowly trucking along making small little changes and improvements every day to my Blog which 99% of the time go completely unnoticed.
On the surface, nothing is changing. But behind the scenes there are small little changes being implemented every day that nobody is really noticing. That’s what makes this method of success so powerful, because nobody really sees your “Secret of Success” because it’s hidden in plain sight. 
So, how do you implement the secret of Kaizen in your life?
Here are some tips / suggestions.
- Small, incremental changes of just 1% very quickly add up to 300-400% in just a year
- Don’t forget that the 1% every day compounds on top of itself
- Use revolutionary change when needed, but ALWAYS use evolutinary change as a daily practice
- Revolutionary change will get you rewards and recognition from people. Evolutionary change will largely go unnoticed, except by you. You MUST recognize and reward the value in small evolutionary changes yourself. Nobody else will do it for you. Unless you work for a Japanese company that was built on the philosophy of Kaizen, in which case you’ll probably get recognized.
- It’s hard for your competitors to compete with you if you use Kaizen. They’re just watching the revolutionary changes you make and trying to copy them. When they do, they get disappointed at the fact that you’re getting better results somehow. The “invisibility” of Kaizen obliterates competitors who don’t understand it. (That’s basically 99% of the human race.)
- You can’t fake Kaizen. Meaning, you can’t just do it for 7 days or 30 days and expect to see revolutionary results. You have to sell out to the concept and do it daily and wait for the results to compound. Once they do, it’s insane how much of a difference they make.
- Nobody says you can’t make revolutionary changes when you’re feeling inspired to do so. If you want to completely re-design your Blog for example, go for it! Just don’t rely solely on revolutionary change. Do it ON TOP OF Kaizen stuff.
So, what are you going to do to implement Kaizen in your life?
If you’re a Blogger, where would your Blog be if you just wrote ONE extra article per month? Think about that for a second. What does your brain automatically assume when you ask yourself that question? If you wrote 10 articles last month, what would have happened if you wrote 11? Not much more? Are you sure about that? What if you researched and improved your Blog’s user experience by just 1% every day? What would your Blog look like in one year?
What could you do today to take you closer towards your Inspired Money Maker path by just 1%?
Maybe you could read one of the Similar Posts below for inspiration.
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| 18 Comments
It’s so very true about the Japanese, you rarely see them revolutionize and industry (although Nintendo has had a revolution of sorts with the wii, which is appropriate since the code name for that console was “revolution”), but they always, always improve anything they make over the original, and keep on improving year after year. While American car makers were building cars with planned obselecense (that is, made to break so you have to buy a new one), the Japanese were busy building cars that run nearly forever. Ditto for TVs I mean, would you buy an RCA or a Zenith? (I sure hope not!), not when you can have a Sony or a Panasonic.
Great article, Paul!
I think one the major shortcomings of present day culture is the devaluation of small, gradual improvements over time - everyone wants the quick fix.
However, I find the bulk of achievement does come in the form of evolutionary change as you described. The willingness to consistently bank the 1% improvements over time is what makes the difference between success and failure. The small actions - exercising every day, reading for 30 minutes, meditating for 15 minutes - really add up over time.
I’ve noticed exactly the same thing! And especially combining kaizen with consistancy has seen huge results for me.
Previously I used to go to the gym and go all out 2-3 times a week, eating big on those days (I was bulking up) and really putting in a lot of effort, while the other 4-5 days I would sit around doing almost nothing.
Come a year later I’d seen very little improvement as most of the effort I put in on those 2-3 days just vanished in the off days.
Now for the past 6 months I’ve been excercising 7 days a week (5 weights, 2 cardio) and eating properly every single day and have seen MASSIVE improvements (like 5x more than before) simply from consistant effort.
“…valuing, celebrating and rewarding yourself for SMALL changes.”
I told someone this exact same thing yesterday in a reading I did about her procrastination and time management issues. I encouraged her to celebrate and reward herself for every small step that took her closer to her major goal, and to respect rather than underestimate the value of those powerful moments.
Such a lovely moment of synchronicity to read your blog post saying the same thing the very next day! I hadn’t heard of the term Kaizen before, thanks for the enlightenment!
Kaizen is so present in the japanese martial arts I practice. It is pretty rare that we learn a new technique. Every week it is, “rotate your wrist another 10 degrees”, “pull down more with the little finger first”, “focus on your balance”. The process is infinite.
I’ve also been thinking about getting old posts seen again (even though my blog just started). I already have a related posts plugin but I’m not a fan of it at the moment. Can you provide a link to the plugin you are using so I can have a look?
Thanks
@Jarrod - Warrior Development: Which Martial art do you study? I’m a student of Bujinkan.
The plugin can be found here:
http://rmarsh.com/plugins/similar-posts/
@Kiki: I love synchronicity.
Thanks for the link Paul.
I study Iaido (japanese sword) and Jodo (japanese short staff). Been doing them for about 18 months now.
Great post, Paul.
In his book “You were born rich”, Bob Proctor discusses the concept of “the razor’s edge”, which is very similar to Kaizen… that the difference between those who are enormously successful and those who are not is as fine as a razor’s edge. What makes the difference is putting in just a tiny bit more effort every day than others (evolutionary changes) - sometimes these are so small as to be unnoticeable, but they add up over time to create a very significant difference in achievements and income.
Funny you wrote a post about this. I just recently listened to an audiobook called “One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way” by Robert Maurer. The author is a psychologist at UCLA and is considered an expert on Kaizen. I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking to make slow and steady but powerful changes in their life.
Rewarding yourself for small achievements - that is absolutely invaluable! You’re absolutely right, so many times only the revolutionary changes are rewarded and noticed, and so many times in our lives, the evolutionary changes go unnoticed and though they are SO important, we do not give ourselves credit for them. I find that sometimes I have so many things that I want to accomplish, that I find it hard to focus on what to do first, and am often looking for those big, revolutionary changes to make a difference. Instead, if I were to focus on making those steady, evolutionary changes, I would end up gaining more results over a period of time. Thanks for the post - it was excellent!
Great job illustrating the principle of kaizen with a practical example. I think people sometimes have the impression that kaizen is some complicated thing that they could never understand. But it’s really quite simple. Continuous baby steps.
I’d not heard of the word Kaizan before but I love the concept and it’s something I have been implementing in my life. I find it keeps my momentum going when I do at least one thing everyday towards my goals - however small, just as long as I do something. I really enjoued this article!
Thanks also for the tip about the plug-in - I was about to go on a hunt for something exactly like that this weekend! One question - I installed it as a widget but can’t find anything about how to install it at the end of posts as you have done. I presume I need to put somewhere but not sure where?
I was trying to copy the piece of code that has a bracket then says “similar posts” but it got eaten when I posted my above comment…So I was saying I presume I need to put that little bit of code somewhere…
The similar post plugin really works! No doubt you’ll find that the more content you add, the value of this will grow exponentially. This is the way Amazon is able to cross-sell products so successfully - and look how they have done…
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