"Kaizen." Simply put, it's the philosophy and action of seeking gradual and continual improvement. It's what made companies like Toyota great. Sure, the idea has its critics, but what idea doesn't? One thing is certain: if you choose to apply Kaizen to your life, and really commit to it, then the chances of your life improving go up dramatically. Same goes for business.
Lessons From Samurai
One book that really left an impression on me in high school was The Hagakure - The Code of the Samurai. I was one of the weird kids that mostly ignored assigned reading and ended up reading way more on my own. Anyway, there was some ridiculous stuff in this book because, well, we're always in some state of ignorance we can't yet detect. Still, it's fun to laugh at our mistakes from down the road.
One of the sage nuggets of hilariously bad wisdom from this book was that you should always have some dung on your person. If you mix it with water and drink it, you'll be protected from injury when you're thrown from a horse. Right, I'll get right on that.
The book was still awesome. Life is rarely black and white, and even the most backwards people can have an occasional moment of brilliance. There were two parts that I remember especially well:
- "The man who thinks the present and the future are different is a fool and will never achieve anything."
Dung-drinkers or not, samurai didn't mess around when they had something to say. Samuel L Jackson would be proud.
So what's the takeaway from the whole "importance of the present" concept? If you have the time and ability to do something good today but don't (because of laziness or lack of willpower), what makes you think the future will be any different? This was an especially powerful insight because of an 8th grade teacher that told our class, "If you want to know what your life will be like when you grow up, just look at your life now." Ok, I just have to throw in one more story while we're on the topic.
A British admirer of Gandhi once asked Gandhi how he could stop smoking. Gandhi's reply? "If you can't even change your self, then how do you hope to achieve anything in life?" Ka-zing! Ok, moving on...
- The second insight from The Hagakure: "The person who isn't afraid of death can achieve anything"
Scary to contemplate death? Maybe, but just remember that...
- We're living in a universe with 125 billion galaxies
- Each of those has 100 billion stars (more or less)
Still scared? At the end of the day, all you can do is work to improve the world a little and pass knowledge to the next generation. Life is largely out of your hands, so unless you're turning fear into something constructive then... drop it. Why wouldn't you?
Get To The Point Already
Really this is just an idea for a loosely knit philosophy that works as well in life as it does in business. Commit to constant improvement, savor the present, and fear nothing. Try it for a month, and leave a comment to let us know how it goes!
Is This Really A Company Blog? I Just Want To Know How To Make More Profit?!
First, Kaizen is a prerequisite to greater profits for the vast majority of businesses.
Second, savoring the present is key to being productive. We even have scientific evidence showing that people who escape the present by daydreaming are unhappy! As far as we know, we can only act in this - present - moment - right - now - so - do - something - useful!
Third, fear nothing. There are limits to knowledge that you can do nothing about. If an ad campaign flops because you used a bad keyword, it's not your fault if everyone thought it would work and had no evidence to the contrary. Does that mean you're not accountable? Absolutely not! Your mistake is in seeing a mistake in progress, knowing that you could change it, doing nothing about it, and then costing yourself and your company time, money, and energy.
We can never be perfect, but proper application of analytics ensures that we profit from our mistakes and strive for a better tomorrow.
And finally, Richard Feynman shares his findings on discovering new things. Yup, same guy that invented Quantum Electrodynamics, and bested Newton and Einstein.