Grow your business with kaizen strategies
For me, 2009 is the year of focus aided by the Kaizen Philosophy—a way of being that encourages small, continuous improvement.
Although generally associated with post-World War II Japanese industrial recovery, Robert Maurer, author of One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, noted that kaizen has its origins in Training Within Industries (TWI), a post-Depression era methodology of making continuous improvement.
As World War II hit America, factories were tasked to increase production, while at the same time losing factory workers to military service. Instead of making radical changes to the factory processes, workers were tasked with making small continuous changes. For example, if a factory line had 100 different processes, the goal was to make one small change per process. The results of WWII factory production is legendary.
Kaizen and Your Business
We human have big goals. When we diet we want to instantly lose 20 pounds. When we start an exercise program we want to run a half-marathon. When we start an online business, we want 10,000 people to sign up for our mailing list on day one.
What happens when the pounds don’t come off so easily, or a month goes by and only 5 people sign up for your mailing list? The natural temptation is to give up – - to reach for the Snickers, or to jump to another “instant success” business idea.
When meeting a client for the first time, I do my best to manage their expectations—for example, to let them know that they are not going to get effective articles for their article marketing campaign if they pay $5 each and have them written by a non-English speaker. The client may not like paying more for articles, but over time they have proof (through analystics and conversion) that the better content brings the better business result.
In terms of our own businesses, what do you think about mananging our own expectations but drafting a Kaizen-inspired blueprint for our businesses? What would that look like? Maybe
• 5 new mailing list sign-ups this week
• 8 the following week
• 12 the following week
• 18 the following week
• 24 the next week
Not very sexy, but by following the Kaizen philosophy, you will experience steady, continuous growth.
How else to apply Kaizen?
What if you focused on the small continuous improvements that will bring in one excellent client this month.
Or, if you wrote an update to your last e-book and re-releasied it at a discount to everyone on your list?
Or what if you spent one hour once a week calling or e-mailing your existing clients? Or 15 minutes?
It’s these small continuous improvements in your processes that will bring changes of legendary proportion.
What 2009 Continuous Improvements Will You Make?
As we swing in
to 2009, my small continuous improvements will be in the area of article writing and high touch customer service.
How about you? Please leave your comments -
Nice article. The idea of small, but continual, improvements is one that many businesses seem to have forgotten especially web based entities. Most of them seem to be looking that ‘big hit’ that makes them money fast – unfortunately, this very rarely happens and isn’t sustainable. Better to do it the slow but steady way.
I really try to take this approach to life, although I didn’t know that Kaizen what the name of what I was doing. In my real estate business for instance. You just can’t have the expectation that you are going to sell a million dollar house every week. You have to work hard and focus on getting appointments and from there do your best and let the chips fall where they may.
For my SEO business I try to build a couple of links for each website a day. I block out some time of my day to focus on commenting on blogs that I find interesting. I also block out some time to implement link bait ideas that I dream of in the middle of the night. (yes I dream of link bait at night). Realistically, I think that you have some very wise advice and that more businesses need to relax and take it one consistent step at a time.
Kaizen, the kind of philosophy popularized by the Japanese can really work in any business. And this can work, even in online jobs and businesses.
Thanks, that must have taken a loads of work to put that together. i don’t like seeing my house value drop though. ha!!
You say it’s not sexy, but when that client is asking who to make the check out to it’s sexy enough for me.
I am leaning to wards the same goals as yourself, thinking about the long term value of web design related article writing and blog posting, and attention to existing, past and potential clients. One or two phone calls or emails a day adds up to a lot of touches over time, and certainly translates into some business.
I have seen some of your stuff. It looks fantastic.
Thanks
Yup, I agree with you dude awesome motivation.