I had the pleasure of working with Norman Bodek a few weeks ago. I asked him to give a keynote speech for a client conference. During his talk he referenced that Japanese companies look for a minimum of two adopted improvements per person per month—24 adopted improvements originated by each employee each year. The benchmark for U.S. firms that paid attention to this used to be 2 per person per year. (I’m not sure what it is now.) Based on Norman’s comments, my client set a target for each person to be the originator of two improvements each month.
Help them get their improvements adopted while encouraging them to improve again on what they have already done.
Turning targets into benchmarks comes down to execution. This level of improvement is achievable, however it takes work. There are many factors that go into success. I’ll mention two in this posting. I’ll come back to the other factors in future postings.
Kaizen is a Team Sport
I’ve noticed a predisposition in the U.S. to individual goals, measurements, and rewards. Targets like 2 per person per month can be interpreted as a threshold for satisfactory performance for each person. It doesn’t work that way. Read the rest of this entry »
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