What Is Kaizen?

Kaizen is a Japanese management strategy translates into continuous slow improvement. It can be used to improve your personal life so that you can get things done quicker and move more efficiently when you do not have things clutter all over the place. It can also help your business to grow when you apply it slowly but steady.

Continually improving your business constantly will not just help it to grow, the process will be less painful and not overwhelm you or your partners. The philosophy is about continual improvement – huge companies with assembly lines in their production process have implemented Kaizen to help improve their quality control system. Other major companies have used Kaizen processes for value added activities in their manufacturing, production, financial, management, marketing, sales and product development process allowing their real people to perform slow but steady improvement to help improve their efficiency using the low cost approach and they were able to attain meaningful profit when they eliminate waste.

Apply the Kaizen approach to get things done effectively while you eliminate waste and improve your business productivity. Use the technique to develop profit boosting activities that will help you to save money, time and get things done in a less painful manner.

Who can use Kaizen technique?

The good thing about it is the fact that you don’t have to be a big company to use it. In some cases, the improvements you would make to your business may not cost you any additional money. Apply small changes or improvement into what you’re already doing using some common sense and see how you improve after some time. The approach is to make your changes gradually, not to scrap everything and start with new thing, which can be overwhelming and could shot down the entire process all together.

When you’re implementing Kaizen, put in a clean heart, start with the intent to eliminate all the activities that are costing you something but not adding any value to your business. Use it to learn what you are doing well and what you need to focus your energy on, as well as, what you should eliminate. Do not judge or blame people or process because you will continue to waste time, instead approach it with the intent to improve and improve your business alone.

If you are able to create great product but you lack the element of continuity, you are working toward a disaster, your ability to improve on an ongoing steady way to promote real life organic growth is what will build you and make your business to the level above your wildest imagination. Kaizen technique will help you to use your existing resources more efficiently.

Have you heard the phrase “slow and steady wins the race” it means you will get overwhelm and stressed out if you want everything done at the same time. For the technique to work, you have to be consistent and diligent in your improvement. Measure your progress after some time to see where you are wasting time and relocate your time to where it is most needed.

How-To Start Using Kaizen’s Methodology

You can start by reviewing your current process, so that you can see what is working and what is not working in your business or your personal time – check out what is really making you tired or what frustrates you the most about your day. In other word, what is draining you out, figure it out and then find a way to walk around it to make it less tiring and more efficient without spending much money – Do it the Kaizen way!

Do the math, get a workable plan and stick with your plan then watch out for any major or significant improvement.

Use a simple Excel worksheet to create a time map with days at the top and time on the right side column with your data in the middle. To help you analyze how you spend your days. You can then slim-line unproductive activities that distract you to attain more efficient and effective productive day.

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Email, forum or blogs can take a huge chunk of your time, watch out, time yourself how long you intend to spend attending to e-mail, remember they will not add much value to your business, if they did at all. I usually do them last, and spend not more than 30 minutes. Use your time wisely to improve your business, email or forum should not take priority in your daily routine, schedule them last.

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Make gradual improvement processes, so that you don’t shot down the business. Keep the business as it is and keep making little but steady value added changes so that you can effectively implement the Kaizen technique. You need to know how to answer the following questions in order to develop proper application of the technique.

• What is already working?
• What is not working and why?
• What to change and how to change it?
• What to test and how to test it?
• What not to test and why?
• What to change and how to change it?
• What not to change and why?

Sometimes, your idea or solution to the questions can be a response to a problem or it can come out spontaneously, the most important thing is when you recognize what is not working, write it down and make plans and map out how you intend to change it and be realistic with your timing.

Why do you need to do this?

Because everything you do reflect back on your business productivity and growth. After realigning your time and activities, you may realize the time you save is not so huge on a daily basis – that is the beauty of it, but when you compound all the little tiny minutes together and use them for something you would have not done normally, then it will be a plus to your productivity. It will help you to eliminate the waste and promote efficiency.

Things that you do regularly or on a daily basis will soon be part of your routine, once you master how to better utilize your time, it will turn to a routine, a norm, something that is part of you and could be incorporated as your business best practices.

The bottom line is to make your life easier and help you to cut the hours that will normally take you to perform an act or a process. Once you properly apply the technique, you would have incorporated the following:

• Reduce waste and inefficiencies while you improve quality
• Simplify your work, have a standard way of doing things – an acceptable procedure for your business
• Cut backlogs and drop cycle time
• Increase customer service by adding more benefits
• Improve / correct thing that are not working in your process
• Create a regular follow-up, which is a good practice and will help to sustain your improvement
• Continue to educate yourself on how to both improve you and your business
• You’ve gained more self-discipline

Work-at-Home key Areas of Improvements using Kaizen techniques

Just get some things on a regular schedule that you can follow week after week to gain some momentum and steadily grow your business – the quote is a special advice from one of the internet gurus, Jimmy D. Brown.

Product – make meaning out of your innovation to make the world a better place. Create product that is needed, useful and easy to use – over-deliver in your functionality and yet not complicated. Deliver value for the money and do things 10 times better than the existing market to jump you up to the next curve. Use this process to see what you can do to improve your product and take your business to the next curve.

Message – Communicating your product or services is extremely important if you want to grow your online business and ultimately, the profits – it’s your main key to increase your targeted market reach. You may have a good product, if you cannot let the world know what it is or how they can benefit from it, it will just be a waste of valuable energy and time. Once you know your targeted audience – then, target your tasty crowd and use your content to let them know about your product and services. To increase your lead conversion, you need to apply the Kaizen processes by continue tweaking your messages until it presents the true picture of your product or services.

If you need to improve your copy writing skills, you can start with reading books and taking mini-courses then graduate more trainings and personal coaching.

Customer Experience – Customer service is one of the most overlooked thing in a business process, yet the most important because it’s the last thing the customer will remember about your business beside the product. Do it well, and you’re guaranteed a repeat business as long as your product measure up to pal. Always look for little things you can do to enhance your customers experience and give them a reason to give you free advertisement through word-of-mouth

Lifetime Value and Referrals – When you deliver a great product, message, and customer experience you automatically empower your customers to do what they do best, talk about something they love or something they’ve derived satisfaction. Your ability to satisfy your customers will help to create a viral message for your business, increase referrals and build loyal customers.

Everything you need to do to improve your business fall on these 4 things; you have to improve all of them to get the full benefit. You cannot improve on one without the others. Imagine you have a great ad content, wonderful service and people who love you and are willing to refer people to you but your product suck or the process of getting your product is so difficult. Or another scenario, you have a wonderful product but your customer experience is nothing to write home about, people will be embarrassed to send their friend to you even though they are enjoying the product they bought from you. Don’t create a reason for refund or lose a customer that would have been a die hard fan ? improve all 4 areas.

You will get overwhelmed and get stressed out if you want to make all changes you need in one day. It’s a lot easier to make more money in your business by simply IMPROVING something that already works than by trying to create NEW thing. Don’t frustrate yourself, make your consistent changes over time, spread your tasks over weeks even months, doing one little thing at a time and when you’re satisfied, do something else, make sure your improvements are gradual and consistent.

Your business does not have to be a difficult thing to manage, do it in a way that you will have fun doing it and actually enjoy building your business, make it fun.

Kaizen methodology and practices is not a new thing, it’s something that we do day-in-day-out some are very simple and may look so insignificant, so much so, that you don’t pay attention to it – but it can cause you to lose customers, business, and or partners.

If adequate care is not taken and the necessary measurements are not in place to solve issues, it may cause the entire business to fail.

Knowledge is wealth, now you know; all you need to do is act on it and start your own army of one doing what is required to improve your business, one tiny little thing at a time.

All the best with your home based business,

Abby Lawal

P.S. To get more insight on Kaizen’s technique, read more about it online.