One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way

While doing research for my upcoming book " Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Improvements ," I found two books that touched on kaizen-style continuous improvement in our everyday lives -- one was this book with a more intensive and clinical look at kaizen, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer PhD, a professor of behavioral sciences at UCLA. I finally read all of Maurer's book, in one sitting while traveling late last year, and I really enjoyed it. I'd like to share a formal review here. Maurer, in introducing kaizen (translated from Japanese as "continuous improvement"), cites the original Training Within Industry program, Dr. W. Edwards Deming (Maurer's initial exposure to the principles of kaizen) and Toyota's Taiichi Ohno and he describes the impact this approach had for Toyota and others in industry. Maurer, in his book, is translating and adapting kaizen principles to issues in the realm of clinical counseling and his patients, with problems including: Wanting to quit smoking Needing to exercise more Desiring to eat better Wanting to floss daily Becoming more appreciative of one's spouse Ironically, there are some lessons from the clinical realm that we can, I think, bring back to the workplace. Maurer writes of Julie, a patient who wanted (needed) to exercise more. Traditional advice would be to ask her to launch immediately into some big fancy exercise program that, since it seemed overwhelming, might not even get started (or might not sustain) -- sounds familiar to big programmatic approaches to workplace improvement, right? Maurer's advice: "How about if you just march in place in front of the television, each day, for one minute?" Maurer writes about how the human brain, the prehistoric part called the amygdala, is programmed to exhibit a "fight or flight" response. When this happens, our higher-level cognitive thinking is shut off. This is a helpful survival instinct when we are in real physical danger, but it's less helpful when this response is triggered by a change or a new situation at work or in our daily life. Maurer suggests that small baby steps changes, as we use in workplace kaizen, circumvent the amygdala because small changes aren't overwhelming or scary. He asked Julie to just march one minute... and then the entire commercial break, then two. Eventually, Julie was exercising for extended periods of time. From the book: I noticed that Julie's attitude had changed. Instead of coming back discouraged, as so many failed exercisers do, Julie was more animated, with less resistance in her speech and demeanor.... and his patients would say: "The steps were so small I couldn't fail!" Maurer suggests a similar path when trying to cut out sweets from your diet. Instead of going "cold turkey," break off the first bite and throw it in the trash. You are taking a positive first step to weaning yourself off of candy. Combined with positive thoughts and encouragement, these baby steps can lead to larger, sustained changes. Rather than fighting our nature, Maurer suggests we embrace our natural reactions: "During the rough patches, understanding that fear is normal, and a natural sign of ambition, makes us more likely to hold on to hope and optimism-qualities." Now you might be thinking that small gradual improvements are fine, but we also need innovation (a trendy business buzzword). Maurer says there is certainly a place for larger innovation, but we also need smaller continuous improvements. That's a theme that is consistent with our Healthcare Kaizen book. Maurer writes that the reason behavioral kaizen works is that: kaizen approach is a highly effective method of building new neural connections in the brain... What is a new workplace habit, related to Lean or otherwise, that you have wanted to start, but you didn't because it seemed too overwhelming? Let's say your Lean consultant said you need to do an hour-long Gemba walk every day. You don't have time for that... so it doesn't happen and you get discouraged. It's easier to be resigned to saying, "See, Lean won't work here." But what if you followed the Maurer kaizen path and started with a 5-minute gemba walk. That's easier to squeeze into your day, perhaps. Start small, reinforce the behavior, and you might gradually start enjoying the gemba walks to the point when you are now making time to make them happen. Maurer also has tips and lessons about rewiring one's brain for kaizen and changes, including leading yourself and others by asking small questions, such as "What's the smallest step I can take to be more efficient?", learning to practice this habit in a kaizen style by starting small... The author shares key positive questions we can ask ourselves, including: If I were guaranteed not to fail, what would I be doing differently? And, if you're trying to reach a goal (personal or workplace related): What is one small step I could take toward reaching my goal? To work toward successful change in the personal realm, Maurer also writes that we need to unlearn some deeply engrained notions, including the cultural teachings, including: "...change must always be instantaneous, it must always require steely self-discipline, and it must never be pleasurable." "self-reliance is a frequently used but very poor strategy for coping with life's adversity. That's because we are biologically "wired" to reach out for support when we're stressed; it's in our nature." Later in the book, Maurer creates an interesting twist, as the kaizen principles (originating in the workplace) are brought BACK into the workplace, as he described how staff at a medical clinic really turned around their operations and became successful through these same ideas he had used with his patients. It all comes full circle. Maurer also makes a great case for how we start, with kaizen, by learning how to see and address little problems. Then, we are able to see and fix larger problems. I know that has been the experience in hospitals that are using kaizen methods. We write a lot about small problems and small improvements in our book, but that's the starting point. There will always be little problems even as we start fixing the bigger, more systemic stuff. All in all, I found this an enjoyable and thought-provoking read - for my personal life and in the professional realm. I'm not big on "self help" books, but Maurer's translation of kaizen to the personal realm was a fresh take on continuous improvement. There are ideas in this book that we can all apply to our New Year's resolutions or other improvements we hope to make.

The overall concept is often seen as too simple, but it actually is a powerful way to accomplish large and complex tasks when not pressed by a close schedule. The author explains it and gives examples from life, but they mostly are sort of the self-help tasks that people have. This is good, but some of us have physical tasks such as clean out the garage or the basement- write that book or organize hundreds of photos. Here is where the crux of the process breaks from traditional thinking. Einstein said that one cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that caused it. (He said it better) Thus, tasks that have failed to be handled for whatever reason can be approached and you can succeed. You probably should read the book or one like it to get the entire idea, but in brief (that's the time most of us have anyway) here it is: Any task can be accomplished by a series of teeny, tiny steps. The tiny steps part is what is counterintuitive. An example from life; I have a table that had a large pile of papers, boxes, printouts, mail, magazines and notes. Actually about two feet high. The Kaizen approach is to determine what tiny task can you do daily that will allow you to make progress. The task must be so small that it is trivial to fulfill it. Thus, since it is so easy to do, you will do it without fear or apprehension and experience success each time you do it. My goal was to take off three pieces of paper a day. Some days it was just three pieces of paper, other days it might be a magazine (more than three pages), and I completed my Kaizen task in a few minutes each day. It was easy. And no, I did not get inspired and decide I could do the rest in one fell swoop like the "self help" books advise. I continued to take off a few pages a day and eventually it was a clean table. No muss, no fuss, no gnashing of teeth. Great system, buy the guy's book.

A different approach to improving and growing that’s actually enjoyable and doable. Love this book and highly recommend it to everyone who struggles with overwhelm and stress!

Un petit livre simple et facile à lire qui aura un impact définitif sur la vie de chacun. Chaque fois qu'un obstacle ce présente dans ma vie qu'il soit grand ou petit, grâce à ce livre je sais qu'il n'y a rien d'insurmontable quand on y va un pas après l'autre. Ce livre est tout simplement magnifique, un compagnon pour la vie.

We live in a world that believes that positive change in our lives is only accomplished through dramatic often disruptive actions. That, for example, if you want to lose weight, you should drop to 1000 calories a day and start running for an hour every morning. The idea of massive action for massive change seems to make sense. Yet, I as an individual, and I suspect we as a society, harbor a sneaking suspicion that the only massive thing about the previous sentence is that it's a massive lie. So what is the alternative to massive action for massive change? In Steps Kaizen. One small step can change your life: Kaizen will teach you to turn the idea of change on its head. Instead of looking to take massive action to make meaningful changes in your life, you'll start with tiny, nearly imperceptible changes. Changes that are so small they at first seem to be completely meaningless. Instead of reluctantly sliding out of bed, slipping on your trainers, and running your first 60 minutes since the school marathon 25 years ago, you should run for 10 seconds. 10 seconds? How can you get fit running for just 10 measly seconds? Let me introduce the magic compound interest and small daily growth. See, most of us don't see the power of small daily gains. 10 seconds of running isn't going to turn you into Mo Farah. But those 10 seconds of running do something far more important: They circumnavigate the monkey brain. The part of the brain that is fearful of change, that hates exercise, that thinks 60 minutes of you running around the block may as well be the equivalent of you climbing Mount Everest, in your undies. That 10 seconds of running trains your brain to think, "Yeah, this 10 seconds of running is easy! I can soooo do this!" The next day, you add an extra 10 seconds. And you find running for 20 seconds easy, because, well, it's only 10 seconds extra and you found running the previous 10 seconds so easy. However, here comes the magic: Keep on adding 10 seconds each day, day-after-day, week-after-week, and you find yourself, without even realizing it, growing, running, and forming a habit of running. If you started running today, for 10 seconds, then every day added on an extra 10 seconds, by the end of the year, you'd be running for - let me just wave my magic wand - 60 minutes. Small actions building on small actions, taken each day, can add up to massive dramatic change. This is what this book shows you: the power of tiny changes for massive change. And it's worth every minute of your time and every penny spend on it.

I think this helps to really change life’s perspective, I really liked the kaizen way of thinking and it helped me a lot

This was the perfect book to come across at the beginning of the year when we all feel like we want to improve our lives. Easy to read and simple to implement. Rather than jumping into the deep end and failing, then feeling even worse, this book enables progress in bite size successes and gives us a feeling of empowerment to keep moving foreward. A must read for anyone who wants to achieve any goal.

Must read book.