Brainstorming sessions that we are usually asked to facilitate, involve the core directorial team or the team full of leaders, managers, despite the titles , they are just the selected few in the organization. Either they are so well aligned on the vision, mission , core values and the goals or the fear of operational friction that they hardly disagree. Neither do they see the relevance of thinking differently nor are they able to think out of the frame so the results are more or less the expected ones and not anything challenging or exciting.
Very recently we were engaged for a small team who dealt with selling ceramic tiles and bathroom fittings, it was interesting for us to see right from housekeeping personnel to financial officer sitting in the same room, we were quite thrilled and the results were all the more exceptional with each team member coming up with loads of ideas and all of them irrespective of titles , being recorded and each one of them ensured that in a way or other these ideas will be brought to action.
As moderators, we were urged to think, many of them in the team would probably have never heard of the term “KAIZEN” but what they were applying and following through was exactly the same.
People have always viewed KAIZEN as a tool , however we believe Kaizen is more about human dignity than being a tool, giving each one’s idea its due importance made people feel respected and a sense of ownership built without any leadership pressure.
What struck us the most wasn’t the speed or their growth but who is involved in improvement, when each one feels he or she is responsible for improvement, the company on its own develops a culture of improvement, it need not be enforced or implemented, when it comes from people, they take the responsibility to implement.
The Kaizen philosophy vehemently rejects the notion that only a selected few members of a company’s hierarchy are responsible for innovation, it insists that it has to be an everyday task and concern of all employees at all levels.
Toyota, the world’s leading automaker in terms of sales, reportedly implements a staggering one million new ideas , each year in various areas , paying attention to all micro details and most of these ideas are said to have come from ordinary factory floor workers.
Kaizen helps shift innovation from a single event to a process ideally reflecting in an organization’s SOP reviews , Team meetings and feedback conversations and more, in every minute detail as possible.
Urging you to think “What if innovation was less about brilliance and more about belonging?
