Kaizen Means Continuous Improvement

Kaizen Means Continuous Improvement

“Now is the time that tries men’s souls. The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country,
but he that stands now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Tyranny, like hell is not easily conquered…
December 23, 1776, The Crisis, Thomas Paine.

When you read this first paragraph you might want to substitute whatever
crisis is prominent in your life – relationships – career – requiring personal change.
Nobody gets out of this world – alive - because change is a constant.

Yes, it is denial, (not that river in Egypt), to believe you will solve all your problems with money and success. Young and old we will face health problems, loss of our closest relatives and significant-others.

Crisis is a constant in our career or enterprise because improved technology and better competition is biting at our fundament. Truly, it is improve (change) or die.

What to do?

The one solution that has centuries of confirmed success in overcoming the crisis that ‘tries your soul’ in youth, middle-age and senior years is lifelong-learning.
When you improve your core knowledge, your long-term memory and learn to
control stress on a daily basis, you take control of your life.

Would it interest you to know that lifelong-learning reduces your risk of dementia
and Alzheimer in particular up to 40%? Google: Yaccov Stern, M.D. Columbia
University School of Medicine.

How about the view by researchers at the University of Cambridge in 2008 that you can increase your longevity up to 14 years by modifying your lifestyle?

“Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” Napoleon Hill

Kaizen

You might remember it means continuous-improvement and is the secret of
super productivity by Toyota and SONY. The first thing Americans say about
Kaizen is it does not work in the U.S. because of our diverse culture and attitudes.

It is a Japanese principle to have their staff (executives included) recite daily
rules to live by in their workplace. They shout it out and nobody laughs out loud
at the corny words. We call it Command Affirmations.

The morning shout-out speaks to five workplace concepts.
1. ‘Sort out’: finding stuff in the workplace that is irrelevant.
2. Straighten out: have a system for orderliness.
3. Scrub: cleanliness is everyone’s responsibility because
it leads to personal creativity and contributes to success.
4. Standards: leads to transparency when everyone knows
where the organization stands and can suggest improvements.
5. Self-discipline: you are directly involved in improving existing
corporate strategies

By the way, Kaizen (continuous-improvement) by all the staff, not just
executives, is a principle implemented in Germany and Western Europe,
and considered relevant to national success in India and China.

Five Reasons Why Kaizen Works

a) It’s a brain thing. How long does it take you to recognize a familiar
voice of a relative, significant other or business associate on the telephone?
Answer – the speed of thought – a fraction of a second, right?

b) Of all the voices you have heard – your parents – friends and workplace
peers including your direct superior, which voice must you always believe and trust?
Answer – your own. There is an instinct (reflex) located in your brain structure called the Superior Temporal Sulcus, that is devoted to the
recognition of voices.

c) After identification, your STS gives precedent in belief and acceptance
to your own statements over all others. It must believe and follow what
you emotionally and repetitiously command and order. Your words
are the software forwarded to the brain’s hardware for action.

You can repeat your Command Affirmation aloud in a shout or silently through your Internal Monologue, and if it is done with feeling and repetitiously, it leads to long-term belief.

Your brain (mind) will devote time and effort awake, and when you sleep, to figure out how to help you fulfill your Command Affirmation.

d) Anything done in a group (social activity) is based on an instinctual
evolutionary (reflex) called group-cooperation. If you watch a football game at home on a screen the size of a house, it is not as enjoyable as being in a football crowd of 50 thousand experiencing it in living color together. It’s an instinct of social cooperation. It is social bonding vs
social distancing.

e) When you are feeling the emotion of social-bonding during the shout-out of Command Affirmation, you are changing you mind and body in a
measurable way. It is called Vibrational Frequency and measured by
specialists using an EEG (Electroencephalogram).

When you raise your brain’s electrical Cycles Per Second (Hz),
you improve your immune system, creativity and personal growth.
You are living in the ‘here-and-now’ and improve your personal
productivity up to 38%. Google: Hans Berger, M.D. Austrian scientist
inventor of the EEG in the 1920s.

Endwords

The 80/20 rule by Vilfredo Paredo, Italian Economist, 1906, posits that 80% of
most groups are not contributors – the Trivial-Many. The 20% who are the leaders,
he calls the Vital-Few. This is not a fixed-ruled handed down at Mt. Sinai, we all make a personal decision throughout our lives about which group we inhabit.

Lifelong learning requires three (3) specific strategies:
a) how to read-and-remember three (3) books, articles and reports in the time your peers can hardly finish one.
b) How to double your long-term memory.
c) How to disperse stress (really distress) from your daily existence.
Ask us how.

We believe you are part of the Vital Few (20%) and it will impact your usefulness
in this life. It requires you to avoid and disrupt your comfort-zone, status-quo and
homeostasis for new, untried ground. Choose and Ask us how.

“Tomorrow’s reality is created by today’s imagination…never look where you
don’t want to go.” Roy H. Williams

See ya,

copyright© 2008
H. Bernard Wechsler
www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org
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