Rather than by trying to ‘fix’ everything all at once , be selective. Consider how you can improve your business by making small, low cost, and incremental changes.
Question: Who else is most likely to know how well your business operates ? Click on the question to find out.
Answer: Start by asking your staff who are doing the work. They are a valuable source for what works well, what need improving and what needs to be replaced.
Question: What is a main reason that staff like working in your organization? Click on the question to find out.
Answer: Studies by Forbes, Harvard, McKinsey, and others, show that corporate culture is key factor.
Question: What is a key challenge to overcome with any change? Click on the question to find out.
Answer: The comfort level of staff, and others, with changing to a different way of doing things
What is Kaizen
Kaizen recognizes that your Staff and Corporate Culture are two important attributes of your organization. Originally established for use in manufacturing, its use has expanded to support small businesses and enhance IT Organizations in their existing best practices.
Small Business use of Kaizen
As a Small Business, use Kaizen to improve your business, optimize your operations without massive capital investment. Its core principle—making small, incremental changes—is highly adaptable and cost-effective.
Small business owners can implement Kaizen by empowering employees to identify and solve problems. For example, a retail store employee might suggest a better way to organize shelves to increase customer flow, or a coffee shop barista might find a more efficient method for stocking supplies. These small adjustments, driven by those who perform the work, can lead to significant improvements in productivity, customer satisfaction, and employee morale.
By fostering a culture where every team member is a problem-solver, Kaizen enables small businesses to adapt quickly to challenges, reduce waste, and build a competitive advantage. It’s not about grand transformations, but about the cumulative effect of many small steps forward.
IT Organization use of Kaizen
As an IT Organization, use Kaizen to improve your business. In conjunction with your existing best practices such as Agile, ITIL, SAFe, OKR, or ITSM, Kaizen creates a powerful engine for improving your business, organizational growth and efficiency.
Kaizen and Agile 🚀
Agile, with its focus on iterative development and frequent feedback, embodies the core principles of Kaizen. The retrospective meeting is a key Kaizen practice within Agile, providing a structured opportunity for teams to reflect on what went well, what didn’t, and how to improve. This continuous feedback loop ensures that processes are constantly being refined.
Kaizen and ITIL / ITSM 💡
ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) and ITSM (IT Service Management) are frameworks for managing IT services. Kaizen enhances these by moving beyond simply following established processes to actively improving them. For example, in incident management, a Kaizen approach would involve not just resolving an incident but also analyzing its root cause to prevent future occurrences. This proactive problem-solving is a cornerstone of Kaizen.
Kaizen and SAFe / OKR 📈
SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) and OKR (Objectives and Key Results) are frameworks for scaling Agile and aligning teams with strategic goals. Kaizen provides the methodology for achieving the “how.” For instance, a SAFe team might use a Kaizen event to streamline a particularly complex release process. Similarly, a team using OKRs to improve customer satisfaction would use Kaizen to find and implement small, incremental changes that lead to that larger goal. Kaizen provides the day-to-day discipline of improvement that makes these large-scale frameworks successful. It transforms the often-abstract goals of these frameworks into concrete, actionable steps for improvement.