Kaizen - Why does it fail?

Sadly, when most organizations attempt to leverage Kaizen, the holistic approach for continuous improvement popularized by the Japanese, these companies fail to make the gains so widely touted.

It’s not that the Kaizen principles, themselves, fail. Unfortunately, it’s how kaizen is used in these organizations that is the root cause of the failure. This post is intended to convey what kaizen truly is, why it fails, and how to avoid the most common pitfalls associated with kaizen.

Kaizen guru Masaaki Imai described kaizen as a “state of mind that encourages everyone to consider it unusual when conditions do not continuously evolve” in his book on the subject . Masaaki Imai’s book in the late 1980’s brought Kaizen to Western attention.

All too many leaders approach Kaizen from an operational perspective – a means of cost reduction or meeting next quarter’s profit target. This perspective barely scratches the surface of what Kaizen is about, and approaching it as a means to these ends oft results in bitter disappointment. Kaizen is more than just a budgeting process, it’s a cultural mindset that our quality of life, whether at work, home, or socially, deserves to be constantly improved, and that we must all play a role in shaping it, worker and manager alike. Unless that culture is created, the attempts to gain the benefits of Kaizen tools and techniques will fail.

Kaizen will also fail when management attempts to use the tool to find specific fault with an individual.  If the problem in the organization is mismanagement or a specific employee (also a management responsibility), kaizen will not provide management with what they are looking for.  If the problem is management, itself, or something the management team should be responsible for, root cause analysis will identify management as the source of this trouble, if they allow the problem to truly be solved.  Sadly, when implemented half-heartedly or as part of a witch hunt, kaizen is frequently allowed only so long as it identifies changes that the workers need to make in their process, and not identify or resolve any issues in the realm of senior leadership.

Kaizen requires that we abandon the short-term, target-driven ways that modern corporate culture imposes. With stock-holders clamoring for greater dividends or increased share value, executive leadership has an imposing burden on their shoulders to decide between making the shareholders happy for now and creating a culture of long-term commitment and greater longevity and profitability in the long run. Even start-ups funded by venture capitalists are pushed to “get big fast” and “get large or get lost” without regard to fundamentals of building a culture, or in some cases, even a viable product, in hopes of an Initial Public Offering or sell-off that nets the investors large and rapid profits.  Unfortunately, to really be effective in sustainably delivering the benefits of kaizen, leadership needs to shift their focus to long-term company goals.

The cultural change needs to start from the top and signal to the entire organization the true adoption of a kaizen culture , rather than some bastardized "American Kaizen ".  Unfortunately, this seldom happens as executive leadership gets a neophiliac urge to try something new for a few weeks to “see how it works.” Companies who do this and say that they tried kaizen, but it didn’t work for them are frequently in this camp.  It’s not something you can try on like a pair of sneakers to see how they fit, but something that must be instilled in the masses as a way of life.

Workshop: Organize Thyself

The first step in making this cultural shift to focus on long-term growth and stability is to instill the 5S mentality into the work areas (or gemba, in Japanese as they’re called in kaizen circles) to promote efficiency and productivity.

The name for the 5S kaizen concept comes from five words each beginning with the letter ‘S.’ Originally, these words were Japanese, but have been translated into English as:

• Sort (Seiri) – Identify what tools, material and supplies are necessary. Separate those from those used less often. Identify those not used for a month or more, are no longer needed for the job, or cannot be used.
• Straighten (Seiton) – Mark a place for necessary items so that they can be readily and easily retrieved.
• Shine (Seiso) – Clean as you go.
• Standardize (Seiketsu) – Establish consistent work practices throughout the organization, so work is performed with an established level of quality and efficiency.
• Sustain (Shitsuke) – Continually work to maintain the order established above while looking for means to improve the task, the process, or the quality of work and encourage employees to adopt the habit of following the first four in the list.

As you can see from this list, each ‘S’ is a stage in the process of creating and maintaining a working environment (or gemba) that is efficient. The only items near the point of task execution are those which are essential, labeled and organized for easy access. Those used less frequently are kept out of the way in storage. Following these simple steps has shown to improve the workplace, improve workforce efficiency, and increase safety, morale, and product quality.

Create a Mindset of Constant and Never-ending Improvement

Next, leadership must develop a rapport with the workforce and a feeling of safety and confidence that they are truly trusted as part of the solution. The workers needs to be sufficiently motivated to suggest changes, feel like they can be a part of the solution, and won’t be shot down or humiliated for suggestions that might not work out. The United States Air Force, for example, has a suggestion system wherein they incentivize within their potentially otherwise complacent “don’t make waves” and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” workforce. If a suggestion ends up saving money for the organization, the contributor gets 10% of the first year’s savings. With an organization the size of the United States Air Force, those incentives can be staggering – and so they are suitably motivating to the individual to break from the norm and pay attention.

Suggestion systems have an undeserved bad reputation. Many organizations have tried them as part of some neophiliac management fad right after the leadership team came back from a power retreat or seminar, only to really “half-implement” them for a week or so and deem the concept yet another failure to improve morale and increase productivity. Effectively implementing suggesting systems is an entire treatise in itself, but it suffices to say that a poor implementation of the suggestion process can negate the entire impact of attempts to build a kaizen culture and obtain its benefits.

Write it down!

Finally, once an efficient way to perform a task has been identified, write it down and make it the standard for accomplishment. Once written, it can be easily trained to new folks, reviewed for further optimization, or something else goes here. This process is called standardization and is the hallmark of effectively monitoring and maintaining your processes.

If you want to truly attain a kaizen organization, execute these fundamental three cornerstones and your momentum will the thrust forward. Fail to pay them enough attention and you can add kaizen to your list of “things we tried, but nothing seems to work”.

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