Kaizen: The Japanese Method That Turns 1% Improvements into Career Growth

0:00Hi, I'm Helen. And I'm Sarah. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly podcast where we borrow some brilliance from things we've been reading, watching, listening to, or perhaps studying 20 years ago. More to come on that. And we reflect on how it is relevant to careers today and share lots of ideas and actions that you can use. So quite excited about today's topic. But Sarah has done a lot of more up to date research around the topic, which is going to involve the discussion. So I will let her tell you what we are going to be talking about today. So today we're going to be exploring how to Kaizen your squiggly career.

0:40And for anyone who did business studies of any description at university or college, you probably came across Kaizen because Toyota was always the case study that you were made to learn, which was how to almost like run a production line really efficiently um and i remember not being super interested in it at the time if i'm if i'm really honest and struggling a bit with like oh i'm not sure how this is relevant it felt very manufacturing based i think when when we first learned about it in a in a textbook i remember thinking like kaizen was about continual improvement and then i definitely you know the toyota thing and then it was i think sarah and i because we for people who don't know sarah and i went to university together many many many years ago uh and i think there was like an operations management module something like that it was and you did yeah and um was that with that guy i know who was strategy guy anyway um operations management i remember kaiser and going off in a little reminiscence um and i remember just in time like yeah last in fur Do you remember like LIFO and FIFO?

1:48Oh, yeah. No, I'd forgotten that until you said it. There you go. LIFO, FIFO, last in, first out and first in, first out. I think something like that, which I think has since been applied to like recruitment as a thing to worry about. You know, if you're like, if you're last in, you'll be first out in a restructure. I think it's been taken to a new context. And like lean, lean production principles, all that kind. I just remember a whole module. I don't think that's that bad 20 years on remembering all of that random stuff. stuff in the back of my brain yeah I hadn't remembered any of it but so yeah I've been doing some digging and a few things if you are new to kaizen so don't be put off by thinking oh I've never studied this before we will bring you up to speed and most of what we're talking about today we're learning for the first time too so the Japanese interestingly see kaizen as a noun and it means good change or improvement and it's a method that really emphasizes doing things incrementally better.

2:47So it's sort of lots of small changes. And I was reading one example of companies who've implemented this. On average, the people who work there suggest 19 ways that a company could improve across a year. So to be more productive, to be more competitive, to be more profitable. And it's also quite a democratised idea. You know, like those improvements can come from anyone from anywhere because we should all have a shared commitment to want to get better so I think it's very even better if you know we talk a lot about even better if in its mindset the other thing I was reading about which surprised me is or I think I hadn't connected these dots is one of the reasons it works so well is because it's all about small incremental changes it doesn't ever trigger the fight or flight response system so for you as an individual for you as a team so you know like fear might get in the way of people saying the hard thing or suggesting an improvement but because the focus here is on you know like small small opportunities small ways to be even better you don't have that kind of sense of oh but what will hell think about me or is this a career limiting suggestion it feels quite accessible, quite easy to make happen.

4:08So you sent me a picture of a book, because Sarah and I kind of were discussing this idea. And we're like, oh, we think there might be something in it. And then as Sarah said, she kind of got it went a bit deeper, and she brought a book into it. So what was the book that you invested in that has informed our conversation today? So it's called Kaizen, the Japanese method for transforming habits, one small step at a time. Lady called Sarah Harvey, it was just, I'd not heard of her, I'd not seen the book, I just researched it, and it came up with good reviews. and um what i really liked about it is sarah went to live in japan so she's from london journalist and a writer um so she sort of experienced it firsthand she's also very honest about it's not that everything's perfect like i think um people in japan like work really long hours for you know for example so and she was saying it's not that it's not really busy and quite frantic but she she sort of felt the benefits of it herself and i think it then prompted her to sort of say actually it's a book of boring brilliance it's a book of sort of taking that philosophy that mindset and then applying it to different parts of your life so then she goes into well this is what it might look like for work this is what it might look like for health this is what it could look like for relationships and I would then say almost what we're going to talk about next is then not what's in the book because she does it in more it's a lifestyle book it's also it's also a beautiful book I do like a book that occasionally is in color like it's got color it's got beautiful illustrations in it you know like you're artsy as well I reckon it connects like we go with your brain though because you're quite quite artsy and creative I think it sort of brings your like intelligence and your creativity together yeah so I think it's it's not like a business book and certainly it doesn't talk about some things that we are then going to talk about but for me it was sort of a springboard to then get more interested to then find what we're going to go and talk about it's funny isn't it sometimes how you need a starting point and then when I read the work section I thought oh okay that's that's perhaps some of the smaller changes that we might have talked about in the podcast before in a different way like um you know the importance of getting outside and taking a lunch break and those sorts of things um and pausing during your day whereas what I've now done is sort of gone full-on Kaizen.

6:24So I've taken some of the Kaizen techniques, so the approach, if you were going to learn it, and then said, okay, so then what does that mean for us within our squiggly careers? We're now going to Kaizen our careers, Helen. Are you ready? I'm very excited about it. Yes, I am, because there are new, having looked at this, there are like new terms. So I think I like a bit of newness. So lead the way. What is the first principle we need to learn about? And these are new terms where the likelihood of us saying these in the right way is probably quite low to be honest everybody so um apologies if we are now about to pronounce these completely wrong um but hopefully if you look at the pod sheet and we'll be we'll be close enough and i've picked out the ones where i thought oh these feel helpful for careers because there are some of them do feel a bit more technical so the first one is gemba or jember which one do we think one i don't We're going to go G-E-M-B-A.

7:15Yeah, Gemba. And what that means is to observe honestly the reality. And the kind of concept here is that direct observation beats speculation. So seeing the reality of something. So I was thinking, oh, well, with an squiggly career, if you were thinking about transferring your talents, career change, getting involved in new things, You know, we can think about those things a lot and we can imagine. But what this would suggest is there's kind of nothing better than actually giving something a go. So go and do a squiggly career safari, do some shadowing, getting involved in projects, volunteering.

7:59And I think this is also sort of the checking the reality is the same as what you'd thought it would be. and again not by guessing it's sort of the opposite of guessing. I feel like in the context of squiggly careers lots of people let's say you know you mentioned career change people have a desire to do something different but the risk is they move into a role without understanding the reality of it and then they're in the role so they've made the change and then they're like oh it's still not right you know it's I'm still not enjoying it it's still it's still not the right business whereas if you were doing a bit of gemba gemba yeah it is if doing a bit of that you would you would I think or you would talk to somebody before you made that move you would try to talk to someone who worked in that company or had left the company or um it's like you know when you go for the job interview sort of maybe saying oh can I have a walk around the office you know just getting a feel for a place because like career move decisions are quite significant particularly if you're moving to a new company and you kind of want to get as much information as you can to inform that decision rather than just hoping it's going to work out the way that you want it to so I like this when do you think you've done it well when in your career when do you think you've had a gemba and you've made a decision where you've observed the reality and then informed a decision with it I think when I was moving sectors so I moved from financial services to food and I knew quite a lot of people in that company that I went to work for beforehand.

9:31So I'd had quite a lot of conversation. So I got a good feel for the culture. I don't think it's ever as good as being in it completely. I was also thinking here, because obviously, this is not always about changing careers or changing jobs. I was also thinking this is things like data for your development. So rather than speculating about whether, I don't know, I'm improving my listening skills, the better thing to do would be to collect data because that's the that's the honest reality I suppose I was also starting to think here how useful data is is here because you are trying to be objective you're trying to see the world as it actually is and even if that feels uncomfortable or even if you wish that was different it's sort of starting with that kind of concrete like this is this is where I am today like this is the reality of my situation today so maybe you're feeling really overwhelmed you know lots of people will say the um i've got too much to do not enough time kind of thing which is which is a genuine feeling it's not that there's not a genuine feeling but this is like well where what are the facts you know what how many meetings are you in how long are those meetings how many meetings are you scheduling versus other people scheduling or how many emails are you managing and how many are you sending versus how many are you responding to like that kind of fact-based data can inform the feeling and i think you are more likely to be able to drive improvement with data you know the feeling is just we either feel bad or better but actually if you've got the data you get insight and that you could do something with and improve it so there's almost like the back to what Kaizen's all about and in terms of improve improvements the data enables that I think more than just the feeling well to give a specific example like I think it's fair to say that this morning we were both feeling a bit broken for different for different reasons um so I've not been very well so I'd like I've had like a stomach bug um and Helen has had just like a full-on like full-on work plus you were also up at like 2am or something ridiculous to take your kid on a school trip and so we were both a bit kind of broken and you were talking to me about it and you started off more in like feelings we're both feeling you know like finding it tough but then actually you did start to observe oh okay I'm just going to look at the facts of like the last six weeks oh I've traveled to x amount of countries and i've done this many keynotes and i've been away from home on this many days and actually it's funny like when you were talking to me about it then you sort of went oh yeah that's too much you know like you you couldn't you can kind of got to that conclusion and so the point here is that by directly observing how you spent your time over the last six months six six weeks as much if it was six months then you'd be then you'd be really broken last six weeks um but the point is then and we'll get on to kind of with some of the other concepts then you go well that is the reality and then you so rather than speculating rather than being like oh god i'm all broken it's all over the place you go well that's the reality of the next last six weeks then you start to do well what what would what's the so what now which is some of the other stuff we'll go on to perhaps we'll keep using you as a live example helen great great i'm really in the mind if we can make you feel a bit less broken by the end of our time together um so i actually really liked the next one as well which is muda so m-u-d-a it's a nice word isn't it muda yeah it is nice um and it though it means waste elimination go on which when i did read this i do i do remember this a bit from uh you know when you're looking at like a factory production line obviously you want to get rid of you want it to be as slick as possible but actually here it's quite easy to start applying it to your career so waste can come from like seven different places and I picked out three that I thought so one would be waiting so like waiting by maybe thinking without acting or complaining or waiting you know you're putting off things or you're procrastinating so you know if you were waiting to I don't know approach someone to have a curious career conversation and you're just waiting and waiting and waiting like they the kaizen approach would argue oh that's wasteful you know because you keep probably having to re-remember rethink about it you're still you're still not doing it so you know we always say creating not waiting when it comes to your squiggly career or also you know i'm trying to think about i think some people may approach career development as a sort of work hard and wait like you know the belief that as long as I show up and I work hard then some good things will come my way you know like my manager will promote me or I'll be put forward for that opportunity and I think that is that that that is nice if that did always happen but I don't think it does because other people aren't yeah other people aren't waiting they're building the right relationships and they're asking and they're pushing themselves forward and it's not that we all have to do that but I do think waiting as a career development strategy is quite high risk I think you're going to miss out on quite a lot it's like hoping isn't it yeah like waiting and hoping um the next one I thought was interesting like um another kind of way of being wasteful is almost like wasting motion so they use the word motion and what this essentially means is you are busy being busy but not being productive and so this is almost like looking at how you're spending your time like the things that you are doing like in motion so obviously at a production line that would be how all the pieces like come together but in our working week that would be literally looking at your diary and thinking okay have i have i just been busy being really busy i don't know i've answered lots of emails is like the classic example or have i made progress towards important outcomes or my priorities and so i'm like oh that's quite an inch like am i wasting time on work that's easy rather than important um on work where i can get the quick wins like the dopamine hit but it's not the most important work you know like the right work in the right order.

15:45I think that was quite interesting. We've talked before quite a lot about the thinker-doer and I wonder whether sort of doers are more at risk of like the kind of the waste that they could come from motion because they're so attracted to just doing and picking things up and putting their hand up but it doesn't mean that they are moving in the right direction because I guess it's not that all motion is bad it's just motion that takes you away from the direction that you want to get to is counterproductive for your career. Yeah, because then I guess it's like the motion could then take you in the wrong direction or split your energy across lots of different things.

16:22I also wonder with doers, the thing that I see in doers who are very good doers is they are natural, you know, like they take on other people's priorities and they say yes. And they're not usually natural delegators. So, again, all of those things kind of contribute to the busy being busy. And then the last one, which I thought was interesting, was like, are you wasting your talents? so this is if you're not using your strengths as much as you could be so if you want to i guess what is the opposite of waste productive do we think or creating wasting rather than creating or gaining yeah so i suppose thinking about like if you've got these things you're really good at and then you're not using them in the context of your job is that is a waste and i thought oh yeah I kind of I buy that and I do think people have the most impact in their jobs when they are using their strengths frequently in lots of different ways and also stretching their strengths and we know that's how people find flow as well and so when I was thinking about this area I was almost like maybe the question for yourself is like where's where's almost like the waste that I want to get rid of?

17:35Like, where's the waste that I want to eliminate? Because I think, for me, it's not about the strengths, because I feel like I use my strengths a lot. And probably not the busy being busy one, because I am usually quite focused on what I want to do and what order around like big important objectives. But I think I am sometimes guilty of waiting. So I sometimes know what needs to get done and I sort of just wait longer than I need to to do it and I'm thinking and I and then it does take up quite a lot of my mental capacity like there's um and this is funny actually because this is an email but there's an email I want to send that I think is important um following up from something that you and I did together on Friday and so I've thought about that probably three times but I've still not sent the email and it's like I'm sort of like waiting and i think i'm waiting because i think oh it's an important email so i need like time to do it properly but there's a point where it's like it becomes less too much time to do it so you've missed the moment and also it's not like you know it's not such a complicated email you know but i i just keep i kind of wait sometimes and i i tell myself that that's for like good reasons but i don't always think it is and it's a bit like um and i you know i always rile against the kind of don't want to become a robot thing but you know the david allen two minute task yeah concept of like don't wait to do and they're not always two minute tasks but i think i often wait when they're a 10 minute task i think that's my biggest watch out what would yours be uh well i was actually i was thinking about how to slightly solve i know what that email is that you're gonna send but i do find and this is not an advert for whisper flow and i know she gets so annoyed with me for saying this but i how do they not partner with how do they not sponsor you i feel like they should just sponsor you i just talked to you i sponsored me but what i was going to say was you know the whole like email you've been putting off or like like a document you've got to do that kind of thing i find on it has really changed my relationship with those tasks because now i just kind of go i just spiel something on whisper flow which is basically like a voice to text recorder thing on your on well it goes across all your devices but i'll just be like saying some thoughts like um just wanted to say thank you blah blah whatever I say.

19:55And then it formats it all. And it's never perfect, but I would say it's like 85 % there because I've just spewed it and it formats it all. So all of your paragraphs, everything's in there, kind thanks Helen at the end of it. And then I read it and I'm like, oh, I literally now just have to add one sentence in that I've thought I should probably add that in. It has transformed the mental delay I put on tasks that I'm like, oh, it's going to take a lot of time. And anyway, back to your actual question, which was not a promotion for Whisper Flow. And it was, which one do I think I think combination of motion I think I waste motion um sometimes because I say yes to things sometimes I end up picking up a lot of other people's shit I just end up picking stuff picking stuff up and I'm like okay that's wasted wasted motion for me um and then sometimes I think I wait for the right time you know for a conversation I'll be like oh I need to talk to that person about that and I'll wait for the right time and you're like yeah but that's just a waste it's a waste of everyone's energy and so they're probably are my two and i don't what i think is helpful about using these principles is it just makes you ask the question because it's interesting you're like oh okay what's muda and and there's the things that you sort of talked about are interesting um intellectually but actually when you ask yourself the question like where is waste getting in my way which one of these things is getting in the way of my development my growth i think you get some really interesting insights so hopefully people are doing at the same time with us so the next two are connected but we'll do them kind of one at a time because i think there's a good distinction between them so there's handsai which is structured reflection so self-reflection or examination so this is it's a reflective pause and you need this practice and they do describe this as a practice for then to help you improve because I guess you can't improve if you've not reflected.

21:43And so this links to, I think, probably the most famous concept within Kaizen, which is PDCA, which is plan, do, check, act. And this is a cycle. So if you do ever see this in a textbook, I think I do remember this bit. You know, it's always shown as like a wheel. It's a continuous cycle. And the important point here is that sometimes they add an S before the PDCA. And that is standardized. So the point is that when something works really, really well, you should kind of don't take that for granted. Try and systematize it or standardize it so that then you keep doing what's working and then you improve, improve what isn't.

22:28And so that first bit, that kind of hands-eye bit, I was thinking, how does this connect to Squiggly? And thinking about Squiggly careers, and this is about honest self-reflection, honest improvement. This would be asking things like, what did I learn? Really simple question. Like in Learn Like a Lobster, we do that all the time. We have that question like, what will I learn? Or just what did I learn? So getting really used to asking that question a lot. it would be using things like what worked well even better if um and things like mistake moments you know that's a kind of practice a practice of reflection but without almost adding reflection into your week it's very hard to then do that sort of cycle of plan the thing that you want to have change or kind of make happen actually do the action check like what's worked what's not get some data and then the act is either standardize it because it worked brilliantly or adjust and then the whole point is you then sort of start again it's sort of like the more I've dived into it I think it's like loads and loads of experiments the whole time because you'd be planning an experiment and that could be on anything it could be on time management the relationship with your boss how to change your career and that plan would be a kind of really small thing so the plan might be this week I want to change how much energy I have in my working week so that would be your plan then you'd get to do and you might go so the way that I'm going to do that this week is I'm going to add three 15 minute walks into my week you do that then you sort of check like did I do it like what happened I don't know maybe after every 15 minutes this is where you have your kind of structured reflection how did I then feel having been for that walk how did that impact the rest of my day did I do I think I was better because of it did it increase my energy and then your act would be you've done the three walks okay actually they didn't feel long enough or actually I felt I felt brilliant it feels like it needs to be daily and so I slightly adjust it and you're just cycling through this the whole time and that's how you get to the continual improvement the kind of continual um iteration i guess is a way to think of it i am in listening to you i was like oh this is kind of the it's the it's kind of it's hard a little bit to you know just trying to connect it to career development but i think i do think how you've explained the cycle works because i guess just in of itself before you even get to the um the pdca plan do check act and you just stay at hand side there is still value in just having some hands-eye right so having some reflection so you want to connect it to action and improvement but if I just think about people that we talk to about like life and work and careers um a lot of the time they will say to us I don't feel like I've got time to think I feel like I'm um kind of just stuck going from meeting to meeting so even getting a bit of a rhythm of reflection or habitual hands-eye but like you know like getting that into your day I I think that is helpful and that could just be that'd be like a three minute mind map yeah yeah like a mind map a question to start your day with or something to end your week with what did you work do well even better if like we said like so lots of mechanics we talked about today so if it's feeling kind of slightly complicated to get to the cycle that we talked about i i actually think just just start with the reflection like i think your work will feel and be better if you are adding in some regular reflection because I think that is part of what drives self-awareness and it's very hard to do anything without self-awareness and that you'd be more likely to led by other people's opinions without it.

26:14So I think start there. But then I really liked what you said about, okay, so then you spot an area you need to improve in and then you create a plan around, okay, I want to get better amount of time, whatever it is. You do it. And then it's in the check that you reflect. I like how you said that checkpoint that becomes you're not just checking have I done it you're checking well how do you feel about what you've done and what worked and what didn't work I think putting putting the hand side into that checkpoint I think then I can see how these things really stitch together and then the action that you take at the end of it because it ends with the act is then informed by the awareness like and then that links back to what we always say which is when we when Sarah and I run workshops and sessions for companies we always say what we're trying to achieve is awareness and action yeah always what we're trying to get to and so that cycle kind of gets you to it as well yeah and i so i was looking at this about this distinction between these two because they are they're very interconnected terms but they are different and so the description i found this description of the distinction useful so handsai is the mindset and practice of reflection and then kaizen is the action of improving you need handsai to do kaizen well because if you were just doing kaizen right you'd just be improving but i might improve in a scattergun way so let's say um i want to improve how we deliver our workshops if i do no reflection i'm just gonna just gonna improve i might just go okay i'm just going to include more ai prompts i'm going to do more drawings i'm going to add some music i'm i don't know i just come up with loads of ideas to improve in a sort of not very systematic way and i just try loads of stuff out and you know that that might be fine i sort of i would be continually improving potentially i think the point that they're trying to make is that if you don't if you just sort of plan loads of improvements do them and then you don't have the hands-eye bit which is that point where you You sort of, I like your checkpoint, your sort of slight build, if we're allowed to build on.

28:21Are we allowed to do that? Probably not. But, you know, adapt, I don't know. But you sort of, at that point, if you don't have that reflection, then I think you're not asking that question of like, well, what have I learned? And then your ability to act and to adjust, to know what to keep, to know what to change, to know what to kill, is really hard to do, right, if you're not doing that reflection. Can I share a reflection on reflection, which is a bit meta? Of course. Are you going to use the PDCA cycle to do it? I am not. I'm just going to put my thoughts out into the world. Kaizen has been much more popularised as a term than Hansai.

29:02I mean, I appreciate popularised in a bubble of like business management that we've kind of been in. I mean, I presume it's kind of known outside of that. But if it's not, welcome to Kaizen, everyone. but I just think it is interesting my reflection is that it's interesting that Kaizen continually improvement, making things better has become popularised as a concept and Hansai hasn't as much whereas I think reflection is so important and actually so hard and there's so much opportunity for people to get better at that and for teams to do it better together but I just think it's interesting that when you think about the books There's much more action, isn't it?

29:41And, you know, what do businesses probably have a predisposition towards is like something you can see. You know, reflection is sometimes invisible, but Kaizen and action is very visible. And I think we all feel more comfortable when something is visible. I can visibly see Sarah's made these three changes to the workshops and we can track those. And it's much easier. whereas we we read something about it actually when we were preparing for when we're doing the research for lobster around most people know that self-awareness is important but at the same time don't know how to do it as part of their day-to-day reality because most teams don't have practices that help us to all be more self-aware together so it's very reliant on us as individuals going what did I learn you know almost having some tools to think what did what did work well what would be even better if or naturally to kind of be interested in these areas when I think about teams I think are doing this well I think they do start to work out together how they can do both of these things like some space for some like self-awareness and self-reflection and team reflection that would be like for example our mistake moments that we do as a team that is self-reflection and team reflection because I am sharing a mistake that I've made and I'm reflecting on it in that moment and I'm at that point I'm not into Kaizen I'm not acting because I'm just sharing something that's happened and also the team are all learning from that so we're all in that kind of hands-eye mistake moments really are hands-eye because they are examining that mistake to turn mistake moments into Kaizen you then have to go so what now yeah so like okay so I've made that mistake in that workshop got something mixed up or whatever what would I need to do next time to make sure that wasn't going to happen again and so yeah it's interesting just to think about those things are not that common I don't think probably in our work.

31:43I have loved this I have um I actually got really into it obviously. Yeah it's really interesting and I've got many thoughts it sparked many thoughts for me and I have a question for you but the thought was I mean we we've really focused today on how these sort of principles of Kaizen can be applied to your career because obviously that's mine and Sarah's framing for everything and it's called the Squiggly Careers podcast so that makes sense but I do think for a team conversation thinking about how you can apply the principles of Kaizen to the way your team's working could be a really interesting way of going well how do we waste and you know do waste elimination together how can we understand the reality of each other's roles and things like that I think you get some really interesting insights but of the four which we will summarize in the pod sheet everyone so make sure you go to amazingif.com if you want that it's on the podcast page or we will link to it in the show notes so of the four um Gemba, Muda, Hansai and PDCA which one Sarah do you think having talked about them today which one are you most sort of attracted to spending a bit more effort on personally?

32:45Gemba or Gemba whichever one we decide that it is I think I like the direct observation beats speculation. I think I do think instinct and intuition is important and you shouldn't ignore like how you feel. But I think there is the example they give when you read about this is like going and observing a car being made. Like that's always the example. And I think, well, OK, I don't I don't necessarily want to do that. I don't mind doing that. But I'm thinking about I was in Denmark a couple of weeks ago at the Lego group at their kind of offices there. And sometimes there is just no substitute for like being in an organization's environment.

33:28And I do loads of work with Lego and know lots of their colleagues and have a real feel for what it's like to work there. Because I just spend lots of time with their people. But it was brilliant being there. So, for example, I was actually calling someone from our team there and I was surrounded by kids playing with Lego. So, you know, it's not a and they don't have to do that. Right. Obviously, that's one of their very important audiences. But I feel like they really do care about what they're kind of creating for. Like they really care about kids playing and being playful and they take that.

34:01And then you see it. You see it in like the office environment and how they're set up. and they've got this like um there was always like this massive like play section and there is just like lego everywhere and kids just sort of creating all of these things and i was thinking someone could describe that to me or you could be there and it just it feels very different i think just kind of being there and watching it um and so kind of i think more of that for me it's something it's kind of been on my mind I also think I learn a lot from observing I think I'm quite a good observer I'm quite a good critical thinker I'm quite good at watching and note you know we talked about noticing before and so spending half a day or a day sort of in other people's worlds and just watching and noticing but without the pressure to necessarily you know sometimes we I did actually that morning have quite a high pressure thing I was doing first but this was after the high pressure thing had happened um you know where you've just got the slight spaciousness to to do those things i think is really powerful and so that i'm not guessing what it's like to work in that company i sort of i i can sort of sense it and i can notice it and i can watch it so that one for me about you um i quite like the addition of s to the pdca i appreciate you're getting lost in acronyms everybody but that is the s stands for standardized so you standardize it as a result of plan do check act it has made me think what in my week and slash the way that I work would benefit from standardizing like because I think you know if you're constantly thinking or doing from scratch it takes a lot of effort like how do I run this meeting or how do I have this conversation with a client like what are the topics we need to talk about if you're constantly asking yourself the same questions it's kind of just a waste of mental energy yeah I'm just wondering for things that i do repeatedly in my week where could standardization help a little bit and to your point i definitely don't want to be a robot but i do want to spend my time my brain energy on other things and so i don't want to waste it there so it's probably it's a combination of like probably the waste elimination muda but i really like that that particularly the s like the standardized what what could be standardized to make um better use of my abilities i suppose yeah and actually in some ways it's interesting because it's not the one i would have expected you to pick as somebody who's got a value of freedom it feels like standardization could potentially take that away but i think what's it gives you it or or that's what i was gonna say or it gives you it right so if you're standardizing the repeatable things the the things you already know then actually like well i've got more freedom to spend time thinking about other things or in more kind of important places and actually is it like as a as a company like we are not like an operating line i wouldn't say you know like can i share just a very simple way that i think that just worked well just to bring case people yeah think oh what does it look like because we've done this already so we have changed our agendas for internal meetings to decision discussion agendas so that is a standard now as an agenda for our meetings and i mentally find that so much easier to engage with because when we have a meeting i don't have to start with oh i don't have to send a message out beforehand what are we going to talk about or for the first five minutes go what's on your list what's on my list okay so let's have a combined I have to do any of that it's just there is just an agenda for a meeting um that has what are the decisions that we need to make and what are the items we need to discuss and it I don't have to expend mental energy on that I can actually just answer the questions and use the time effectively um and that means that I can put that energy onto other things coming up with ideas that solving problems doing new stuff much better use so that that's where I think the standardization creates freedom for me yeah and we had an example actually where I had a meeting with you and someone else on our team where I hadn't done that.

37:50And actually, I could feel it though. You know, like I could feel that we were all missing it. And I was like, oh, yeah, it's because we haven't standardized it as much as we could yet. We definitely have standardized it. That was definitely me, like me not doing it. And then we were worse off because of it. Because then we almost then had to spend some time figuring out the decisions discussions. Well, it feels like your cogs all have to turn. and they're not connecting for a little while. They're like, these cogs aren't. And then you connect on what we're talking about and they're like, oh, now we get going.

38:21But it's at least five minutes of like that. Yeah, or at least. It took us at least that. What it relies on, obviously, is the person beforehand having done the work, which clearly I hadn't done. But that's a really good example of like things across the team. You know, as well, there's like, what does this mean for me? And then there's always like the, what does this mean for us as well? So yeah. Thank you. Have a go, everyone. Let us know how you get on. Kaizen-ing your career. Kaizaning all over the place. Hansai, your day. I love it. Well, I think that book really is more about kaizaning your life.

38:52That is much more like you could do it for your relationships, you can do it for your health. And I think what's interesting is it never comes across as being relentless. So, you know, you could be like, well, crikey, 19 improvements from every person who works in your company every year. It could feel really relentless, but actually it just feels like small, realistic, getting better. It's funny how the framing makes a big difference. You know, you start at the start, because I've always thought Kaizan's continued improvement, which maybe has that relentless feel to it. But when you said good change, I'm like, what's bad about good change?

39:28Good change is good change. I like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's everything for this week, everybody. If you've got any topics or feedback that you'd like us to cover, you can always email us we're Helen and Sarah at squigglycareers.com that's everything for this week I'm back with you again soon bye for now bye everyone