Last week we talked about making work effortless and that was actually part two and it was about
just being able to enter a state of effortlessness so that we can make our essential tasks less
draining and more delightful and I know that we learned some strategies like attaching gratitude
to every complaint and never doing more today than we can recover from tomorrow. Those were
some good strategies and so today we're talking about Kaizen as a way of life and work and I
know you've heard us say this word throughout the EDGE program but Kaizen is a Japanese lifestyle
strategy and it's a business culture that encourages us to make small changes every day
that eventually lead to dramatic improvements. So I'm excited about that and then just before we
dive in I do have a pro tip for you all today and that pro tip is don't forget the art of showing
up. That's something we talked about several weeks ago but it's just this idea that when we want to
form new powerful habits it starts when we first operate from our identity and then from our
identity we can consistently show up every day. So I know Dion gave the example of when we're trying
to form a new habit like running we always start from the place of identity and say I am a runner
and the reason is because when we actually upgrade our identity then it gives us permission to see
ourselves differently which leads to delight which leads to discipline. So we start small and that
helps to reinforce our identity rather than our behavior and that's how we build some powerful
new habits. All right well as always you can add your questions your comments in the chat.
Juni and I will be looking out for those as Dion's going along and if everyone's ready to dive in
Dion I will hand it over to you. Thank you Jaylen. I'm just gonna let you teach these courses
so you do such a great job and summarizing and teeing us up. So this is a great question. Has
anybody ever been through formal Kaizen training? Okay so the last time I taught this there was a
guy who was actually Kaizen certified. So Victor Rodeo, Pedro's brother, I was teaching 100x team
and he's Kaizen certified so I didn't know that they were still doing that. So you know it's
really interesting after World War II the Japanese economy obviously was in shambles
and there was a this high-powered team of five called the Deming team and they went in and
rebuilt Japanese manufacturing from the ground up and of course it was fundamentally an American
idea, was an American base. Not all the team members were. There was one particular member
and his name was Tony Barnes and Tony was actually from New Zealand and had an extraordinary life
and Tony Barnes was the guy who I learned Kaizen from and not directly but through his training.
So Tony was at one point you know the ambassador for New Zealand to the United Nations. He's on
the board of Sony International but had a very dramatic childhood. At the age of seven his family
were killed in front of him and he was taken as sort of a boy servant to the Japanese
admiral that ultimately was the one who invaded Pearl Harbor and so he was there literally cleaning
his boots and all this. So he grew up very much learned Japanese and that
admiral actually became like a father figure to him and later on you know so he got very
entrenched in in all things Japanese even though he was a little boy from New Zealand at the time
but got caught up in this war just because of where his parents lived at the time and through
that whole process he talks a lot about not being a victim which is an amazing thing to hear from a
man who has every excuse on the planet to be a victim and he says one of the most powerful
things that he learned from the Japanese culture was this idea of kaizen and kaizen literally means
good change or change that is good and kaizen means this it's very different. So the reason
I'm taking just a second to tee this up a bit because this is not natural for us as western
thinkers. So for those of you that come from more eastern you know background or you have a
you know more Asian background not all Asian countries but certainly in Japan
certain other parts of Asia have this idea and this idea is that think of if I put the western
versus the eastern idea here or versus the Japanese idea here is that I would show
westerners talk about continual improvement and we've all heard that and gone through all that
and almost none of us practice it for the reason that it's western and the reason that it's that
Western one doesn't work is think of a staircase
versus a very gradual slope going upwards.
So if I drew, if I gave you two pictures here
and one is a very gradual slope
that you could hardly notice.
In fact, when you're walking,
you didn't realize you were on a slope.
But after you walk for a mile, you look back and down,
there's where you started, but you didn't feel it.
That's the key thing.
You didn't feel it.
It felt to you effortless.
The lift was almost imperceptible.
And so when you're explaining this to people like us
in the Western culture settings, we have to explain,
and it's not just West, by the way,
there are certain parts of Africa, South America,
and so forth that have this idea that,
and so in the West, we use big words.
We reorganize the company.
We redesign the thing.
We re-everything.
And we like these big, they're not even normal steps.
They're huge steps.
Some of them are like six foot steps.
We just go crazy with these incremental.
And so our changes are very disruptive.
They disrupt people's lives.
They disrupt workflow.
And so the idea of, as we've talked in the past,
that quality, you've got two ways to think of quality.
We either invest quality in a process, the Western idea,
or we invest quality in people, the Eastern idea.
So what happens in, especially in Japanese manufacturing,
on the Toyota line, the very, very best workers on Toyota
work on what's called the Lexus line.
By the way, it's only called Lexus here.
I don't think it's called Lexus very many other places.
It's mostly just known as Toyotas.
But in America, it was very clever.
They took the very, very best people
and put them on a production line.
And then they created this luxury brand,
was nothing more than giving a brand to their best people.
Not their best processes, their best people.
Not their best product, their best people.
Because the best people produce the best product.
And so we've spent time trying to learn the best
management leadership from around the world.
And this particular one's very dear to me
it's micro improvements,
imperceptible micro improvements every day
compounded over time to produce dramatic results.
This is not a normal idea for us.
So we have to take a second on it.
And it, because what it, and what I love about this
and what the big benefit for why you should care, right?
You might listen to this and say, why should I care?
I get the idea of continual improvement.
Yeah, so get continual improvement out of your mind
because why you should care because the benefits are
that it makes improvement effortless.
It's creating a lifestyle
that serves you better and better every day.
Your lifestyle starts to serve you.
Your habits, the way you do things starts to serve you.
And all it takes is a mindset shift.
Now, some call it a lifestyle.
I think that might be a little dramatic
but I think really it's a mindset.
And to me, it feels like free change.
It's all free because the change happens in the background.
And then I wake up
and things are a whole lot better than they were.
And I'm gonna explain to you exactly
what that is and how that works.
And so as we're thinking about this, even for you today
when I hand out the worksheet
the typical thing we'll do is fill out the worksheet
with too much change.
So the real challenge today,
so think of what thin slicing is to projects.
This is to habits.
Think of the thinnest possible slice
but you're not even consciously working on it.
It's just a mindset in which you're always doing this.
So I'm gonna give you a quick couple of examples that,
so Kaizen has three basic pillars, right?
The first is optimization.
The second is standardization
and the third is elimination.
Optimization, standardized.
And by the way, that's not the formal definitions of Kaizen.
That's my versions of Kaizen
because I've simplified all the complexity
as I always try to do for you
to something simple that we can grab.
So optimization is that daily little fine tuning of things.
It's that, almost like if you've ever seen
an English tea party coming for our family
or British and Bridget's mom is.
And so how tea, and so I remember we were celebrating
I think it was our 20th anniversary
and worked with this big intercontinental hotel
and they really made a fuss.
A friend of mine knew the manager there.
And so they made it a very special stay for us.
And so we were there and the lady, you know, it was in the,
in, in Georgia. And the lady came out and, and she asked us,
you know, the service, he said, you know, would you, you know,
what, what can I get you? And we said, what about, could you get
us some tea? But, and she said, well, okay. And I said, no, no,
no, but could you do it the English way? And she was the
British way. And she said, I don't know what that is. I said,
this is the intercontinental hotel. You're a British owned
company. And so she's, well, let me go and check. And so I said,
well, look, we'll show you. So off she goes. And she comes
back. And she's, yeah, we got all the stuff. Just nobody ever
asks for it. Tell me how to do it. So I give her the step by
step and you put the hot water and the two teabags in the, in
the teapot so it can brew first. Don't just dump it in the cup.
And that's terrible. And then the milk is separate. And then
how you what you do and warm the cup and we go through all the
little bits. And so we explain all the bits to her and put on
the tray. And there's got to be a little cloth and all the, and
we explain all the bits. Anyway, she had so much fun
doing this. So she served it was really good tea. And which for
the longest time when we first came to America 30 years ago,
all the junk tea would be sent to the US because we put it with
ice. And so you know that so but now it changed, you know, I
still can't drink that. Sorry, all my southern friends still
can't drink iced tea. Or as they say in the South, sweet tea, I
believe that's one word. Sweet tea. And so anyway, you can
tell I've lived in Atlanta a long time. So as we're going
through this process, she fell in love with this little process.
And so we showed her how to make it a little better and make tea
better, make tea better. And as we got through all of that, she
every time she saw us tea, tea, and she just kept serving us tea
because she had so much fun. But every time she was learning to
it a little better, a little better, a little better. And I
think that what a great idea to what a great analogy for us. So
let me give you how simple this gets. So for instance, just very
recently, why I love it is because it just makes my as I
said, it makes my life better. It's like tree change. So I
noticed that when Bridget comes in, or sometimes when we come in
from from, you know, park our garage into our kitchen, we have
round doorknobs. I don't know if you ever have round doorknobs in
your house. Some of you have little, you know, levers or
round or levers that you know, the handle, we can pull down or
the other ones you have to turn. But you know, when your hands
are full, very hard to turn a doorknob, right? Now, that's a
little thing. So I looked at that. And I thought, where else
does that occur in our house, the back door, when we come back
with our hands full, where else when I come down from our main
floor down to where my office is here. Now I go down a set of
stairs, but often my hands are full, I'm carrying things, I'm
coming with my coffee or whatever. And so it's also a
round knob and going into our master bedroom. So I literally
went out one day, we just got three change of locks, and we
just changed them to those different types, the type you
can use your elbow with or whatever. And it's so simple.
But you won't believe what a change that made because I can
just open the door, keep my hands full. So that's, I didn't
notice that. And then as I was going down my stairwell, it can
be a bit dark, I went and got a couple of those $20 automatic
lights that just turned on. So I didn't have to turn the light on
and off because my hands are full. So you think, well, what
difference does that make? But here's the thing. 20, 30, 50 of
those little things will change your life, but smooth your
things out for you. So these are these tiny optimizations, they
micro innovations. In fact, I don't even want to call them
innovation because it sounds like work, it shouldn't feel
like that. It should literally be you tweaking. So when you're,
for instance, your filing system, how you file your Google
Docs, is it just all in a pile and you rely on search to find
them? Or do you have a very simplified process to save your
files the way? And the list can be very long as to all the
things. But when you come to work, there are little
optimizations that you can do. And you say, why do I do those?
You know, why do I go through that process? So the idea here
of optimization is to tweak something every time you do it,
it can be literally as simple as you notice that, you know, every
time you put your toothpaste down, or you brush your teeth
and all that leaves a little mark. So you get a little rubber
mat, and you put it then you don't have the mark anymore. And
you always have a clean, clean idea, you always have a clean,
you know, area, I meant to say. Another way. So on
standardization is where we standardize. So let me give you
an example how this fits into our training. We've taught you
about playbooks, and playbooks are a very powerful way to
create standardization. This application is once you've
created the playbook, what if you tweaked it a little? What if
you tweak the play? Because you've noticed that in the
playbook, it has, you know, five or six steps, what if you could
optimize that down to three steps? What if
if you could add a little refinement, what, because
sometimes when we explain things, we have so many steps
that it sounds like a big deal. And then when people finally get
through it, they go, what, that's all it is. You know, it's
a bit like financial services, right? We have all these big fat
terms, because then we can charge huge, you know,
consulting fees. So we use fantastic words. And when you
when you boil them all down, you go, Oh, is that what it is? You
know, so that's what it is. And it's the same thing that
constant little tweaking that elimination. So when so when
you've created, so what, let's go through it, right, you come
up with an idea. So you shape it up, you pitch your team, your
thin slice, you execute and present your thin slice, I can
finish my project, and then you create a playbook. So you you
can hand it off to someone else, and then you tweak the
playbook. So the tweaking part is the Kaizen. It's that you
never leave something in its state, it could be as simple as,
you know, never looking for keys, ever. Never look for your
car keys again, never look for your house keys again. And it
can be as simple as having a key ball, many of us have that, or
having a drawer where it all goes in. Even I guess now know
that all the keys go in one place, we never have to ask a
guest, hey, can I get your keys to move your car? Because
whatever, we never have to do that. They all go in the same
place. And we do it in a way that is easy. Or when our kids
were growing up, never looking for shoes, you know, just a
little thing like never looking for shoes, and shoes always in
the same place, and then the same spot, and the kids always
had the same thing, just tweaking it. Once shoes, then
you can add jackets. And over time, you can end up with this.
And then people come and say, how your kids so organized, and
you go, because we did lots of Kaizen, such small changes, the
kids didn't notice. It was such a tiny change, they just like,
Oh, no, no, we just put it over here, when we just put it over
here. And then that's what they do. They just put it over
there. And so when and the other thing we learned is never being
late, never leaving late. As one always tells us little stories
about little Johnny, well, there's a little Johnny story
for that, that little Johnny arrives late at school. And his
teacher says, Johnny, why are you late? He said, because we
left late. The teacher said, well, why didn't you leave
earlier? He said, No, it was too late to leave earlier. So that's
what we want to do here is we want to make sure that we can
put tiny little change. So look at where the stress points are.
For instance, how many of you find that you always arrive at
the airport late, you know, you're under stress that can be
very stressful. So just build that extra margin in and set,
set a mechanism. So I figured out listen, we live in Atlanta.
So we have the biggest and busiest airport in the world.
And we have some of the worst traffic in the country. And we
where I live is about a 40 minute 45 minute drive to the
airport. So I figured out with margin with security with all
that stuff. I'd now look at the time that we fly and I deduct
three hours and I know I'll always be fine. And I've never
been late. And in 30 years of traveling through the Atlanta
airport, I haven't had that problem. So it's a tiny little
change. What did I do? All I did is figured out a number. And
just know I have to leave at this time. Because I'm flying. I
don't I don't think about flying at six. I think it leaving at
three. That's the difference. I made that switch. I have to
leave at three for my flight, not our flight six, because if
I fly at six, I'm always trying to work to the last minute. So
these are these. And you think, well, why are we addressing such
a tiny thing? Well, I've used personal example, but you can do
this in your workflow. Think about your workflow. What are
the standardized tiny little things like one of the big
standardizations we've done throughout this course,
everybody using Q. Why? Because it's not just making each of you
organized. It's that when I hand you something in my team, or you
hand me something, you know how I'm managing it, you know, it's
going, I'm not just listing it, I'm queuing it up. It's going
into the queue system, I'm queuing it. And because it's
queued, you have confidence that because we're all using the same
system. Now your confidence in your team members executing goes
up. It's a tiny, perceptible, imperceptible change. But what
starts to happen is we start to trust one another. Yes, the
weirdest thing about people, it's the little things that
matter. Right? It's the little things that matter in how you
treat people, it's the little things that matter how you treat
yourself, and these tiny changes to your workflow. So I was
trying to think of a way on how I could fill my desk here where
I am. Because I have tweaked this over a period of a year to
Kaizen. I came and I set it up. And then I realized, well, I
could tweak that. And I could add that. And I can put that
little thing there. And I can put now if this this desk is
like my command and control center here, very organized. And
it's so but here's the thing. If I did it the Western way, what
have I done? Okay, I'm going to plan out the whole thing now, right? I'm getting my paper,
the computer's going in on by the screen, and then there's going to be a plan the whole thing,
right? We always want to engineer the whole thing. So what we're doing is we're always using
big words, re-engineering. I'm going to re-engineer, we're reorganizing, redesigning,
you know, re, when you hear yourself saying re-something, you know, you've gone off the mark.
You don't need to re-all any of that, right? To me, it's always amazing to me when a company
suddenly has to, you know, crunch down and they have to lay off people. And my question is, well,
if you could exist without them in the first place, why did you have them? All you admitted
is that you're a lousy CEO, right? That's all you're admitting. So you could have done without
those people. So what did you have all that extra? Well, we, you know, we're cutting our workforce
by 10% and you go, okay, anyway, just a pet peeve about CEOs. What I'm getting to though is,
why do we have to always do the big cuts? And I think I already shared the story of the steel mill
where the board tried to force the CEO to lay off a large amount of the staff,
but he didn't want to do that. So he called them all together and said, here's what we're going to
do. Instead of a few of us suffering a lot, all of us are going to suffer a little. This is actually
the Kaizen approach to laying off people. He didn't lay off people. He said, okay,
everybody's got to take four weeks unpaid leave. That's a lot. Now you can spread it out. You can
take a week here, a few days there. Now, if you can afford to take more leave, unpaid leave,
then trade up with your friends. So the trading went on those who had a little more,
you know, financial ability traded with those who didn't. And so they all suffered a little
instead of a few suffering a lot. That's a perfect example of Kaizen being used,
where you're looking at how do we make this the lowest impact possible? Finally, elimination.
So we talked about firstly, optimization, standardization, and finally, elimination.
Now we're talking about trying to eliminate things like, can I eliminate waste? Yeah, I'm wasting,
you know, I'm wasting paper, I'm wasting this, I'm wasting that. I'm wasting real estate on my desk.
I'm wasting space in my office. You know, the way I've organized where I've placed my desk,
the way I've placed my desk, I've wasted, you know, I've got a wasted opportunity.
So we're looking for those waste. This is wasteful elements that we just learned to look, you know,
they just get a life and we just get used to it. And so what the Kaizen mindset is, it never gets
used to anything. It never accepts the status quo of anything, right? So warning, once you turn this
on in your brain, you can't turn it off. And so you notice optimizations everywhere, you know, so
sometimes it can be a little tough. I had to do jury duty on Monday. And trust me, my Kaizen brain
was fusing. The amount of, I think they did roll call seven times in the same group of 60 people.
And I mean, as in going down the road, down the line with every single person's name.
And I'm like, yeah, there's another way to do this. I can make some suggestions. So,
and so eliminate waste or eliminate steps. Are there steps? Can I do this in three steps, not five?
So let me give you a practical example. When I was creating the Edge program,
the Edge came because of probably a 20, 30 year approach of being a leader. I've been implementing
this in my own companies. And then when we started acquiring companies, I started to train
those leadership teams. And then I realized that if I do this one hour a week, once a week,
that was a huge breakthrough because I realized that was the Kaizen way to create cultural change.
And when you heard, how did I say it to you when we first started? One degree a week will compound
up, right? That's what I said to you. And that was my way of explaining Kaizen. So I could have done
a, Hey, we're going to do a three day offsite or it's a, you know, one straight month of evening
school. Or I could have come up with a lot of ways to do this, but I knew that the most effective way
was to do the Kaizen way. So the Edge was a Kaizen way. And then I was challenged,
can I get it down to one hour? And in fact, next year's version of it is going to be even a little
more optimized because we never stop. We're always doing the Kaizen thing. So next year,
the Edge will start like 10 minutes with the leader where I can tell him he has a power hack.
This will work for your team. This will hurt working. This, this will stop it working. This
will help it working. And then.
We'll meet with the team and then we'll break out.
Okay, so, you know, there's just,
then the last one is eliminating time.
Can you eliminate time out of how,
maybe you've got three steps, but they're taking too long.
Is there a way to make it take less?
And again, you don't have to save half the time,
you just have to save one minute.
And so this mindset of constant micro change over time
becomes a way of life.
It becomes the way you cook,
becomes the way you exercise,
it becomes the way you do everything.
And what happens with it,
so I suppose in that sense,
it is a little more than a habit, perhaps a lifestyle,
but I'll give you one of the most simple ways
is for instance, if you're somebody who cares about,
for instance, your car being clean,
because you just like driving around
in a clean car all the time, which I do,
I say to my kids, messy room means messy mind.
And so the easiest thing is you clean your room.
And so I expected clean rooms,
and up to a point when, get past the parenting point,
but then it's up to them.
But for me, there was,
I'm trying to think of which famous leader,
it's one of the great generals,
I'll think of his name in a second, American generals.
And he said, the most profound thing you can do
is make your bed every day.
See, he had learned that it put order,
it took a chaotic time, it helped you transition,
and it started in order.
And it's always amazing to me how people can get out of bed
and leave it in a mess and go off.
And to me, that doesn't let you do that.
Doesn't allow that in your brain.
And especially with military training,
where we literally were ironing the bed
to perfect corners for inspection, which is ridiculous.
What we learned very quickly
is you needed to put some order in your day.
And you think these things don't make a difference,
but they actually send your brain an amazing signal
that you're worth it, that your life is worth it,
that what you do matters,
and that it feels like there's a standard of care
to your work, a standard of care for yourself
that continually gets better.
And then one day you look back and go,
why is my room always neat?
Why is my closet always neat?
And it didn't start because you reorganized your closet,
it's because you fixed your sock drawer.
And a few days later, you just organized the way,
you know, whatever, your shoes are,
or just the black shoes or whatever it is.
So it's that constant tweaking,
and then you look six months later
and you have a very neat closet.
Where did that come from?
Not because you did...
So we don't do the spring cleaning, we just live clean.
No need for spring cleaning.
So the big Western idea is to get rid of that.
So the beauty of Kaizen, daily micro-improvements,
and not just as a business strategy, but as a way of life.
But I did warn you that once you turn this on,
you can't turn it off, you see it everywhere,
and you'll constantly tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak,
all the time.
So it is, I think it's a lovely way to live.
Questions.
How are we doing for questions?
Jenny says she loves sweet tea.
That's because you married a Southerner, Jenny.
Oh, no, I know most people love it.
Okay, so you've got the workshop,
I'm gonna hand it back to you, Jalen.
All righty, and I don't know if you saw this, Dion,
but Robin said it was Admiral McRaven,
that might be the person.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah, thank you, Robin.
Yes, it is.
Yes, thank you.
All right, well, we're going to step right
into our breakout rooms now.
The worksheet is in the chat,
so you'll have an opportunity
to discuss the material as a team.
And then if there are any solo leaders,
you can just join the room call general,
and then we will come back at,
I believe, 1.55 p.m. Pacific time,
and we'll have some time for Q&A.
So let me go ahead and open up those groups,
those breakout rooms,
and if you need any help getting there,
you can let me know.
There we go, everybody's back, I think.
I think we got everybody back, have we?
Yes, it looks like all the breakout rooms are closed now.
I've dropped that video
that Robin so kindly reminded me of,
and so there, Admiral McRaven,
it's how to change the world by starting to make your bed.
So it's very good, it's a fantastic.
speech, I just dropped it there. If you want to click on it and
watch it afterwards, that'd be fun. It's only about five or six
minutes, and I think it's had several million views. So you'll
you'll enjoy it. Very inspirational. Great speaker.
Over to you, Jaylen.
All right, well, this is our q&a time. So if anyone has
questions that came up during your breakout rooms, or just
have thoughts that you want to share, we'd love to hear some of
the ideas you came up with. So feel free to put that in the
chat or raise your hand and let us know. We'd love to hear kind
of what you are taking away from Kaizen.
Yeah, I think we should pick on people. What do you think?
A little scary, but
Robin, you're always, you're always good for it. Thank you.
Yeah, um, you know, what we ended up doing was looking back
over our time here at NOAA and finding little tweaks and little
places where we save time, you know, and we just, we were just
having a great time. We didn't want it to stop talking about
how you know, we implemented without knowing what Kaizen was,
but implemented all the things that you were talking about. And
now we're just, we just have a name to put on on it. So that's
what we were having fun doing. And, and by the way, Rich, we
don't want to go from 170 to 210. We want to go from 170 down
to 100. If we can, so they'll understand what I'm talking
about.
There you go. Well, that's good. Now you have a name for, I think
part of the course and what we're doing is to give you common
language. Because now you can speak in whole concepts and
everybody knows what you're doing, you know. So when you
finish thin slicing, you do your pitch, you finish your
presentation, you do a playbook, and then you Kaizen it. You guys
just understood everything I said.
There you go. That's good. Thanks for sharing. All right.
Who should we pick on? How about Deb? You're ready. You had the
big, Deb, you had the big win for the week. What was some of
your, what were some of your takeaways from today?
Oh, I, we, we, I'm listening to this YouTube by accident. So I'm
really confused.
Did you click on this?
I've got both of you going on. But we, us, us, us women in the
in the general solo group have decided that after, I think the
exciting thing is after this, this, the next five weeks are
over, we're going to continue to get together because we're, we're,
you know, we're all independent, often different areas and all of
you folks that have companies that you work for, you guys are
going to get to see each other and keep practicing and
everything. And so the four of us want to continue to encourage
and go deeper and learn lessons from each other. So we're going
to start planning. It was Addy's idea. He was the one who
suggested it to get, continue to get together weekly. And so that
was, that was kind of toward the end of our discussion after we,
we laughed with each other about the number of pencils that we
have in our pencil holders, and that it would just be a real
small task to go through and decide which pencils we want to
keep and which ones we want to get rid of. So anyway, thank
you. Thank you.
Great. I'm glad I asked you. Okay, back to you, Jayla.
Awesome. Thank you for sharing. That is so incredible to hear.
And that is it for week 35. Wow, we're getting to the end you
all. And don't forget after this call, you can fill out the end
of call survey, let us know, you know what your takeaways are and
just how this is going for you. And we will see you all next
week. Happy Wednesday.