Kaizen

From Drucker on Asia —
A Dialogue Between Peter Drucker and Isao Nakauchi

Continuous improvement is considered a recent Japanese invention — the Japanese call it kaizen.

But in fact it was invented almost eighty years ago, and in the US.

From World War I until the early 1980s when it was dissolved, the American Telephone Company (the Bell System) applied ‘continuous improvement’ to every one of its activities and processes, whether it was installing a telephone in a home or manufacturing switchgear.

For every one of these activities Bell defined results, performance, quality, and cost.

For everyone it set an annual improvement goal.

Bell managers were not rewarded for reaching these goals.

Those who did not reach them were out of the running, and were rarely given a second chance.

Books

Kaizen

Office Kaizen

The Kaizen Pocket Handbook

The Lean Manufacturing Pocket Handbook

The Lean Pocket Guide

The Toyota Production System

The Toyota Way

The Toyota Way Fieldbook

List of topics in this Folder

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic”. — Peter Drucker

The shift from manual workers who do as they are being told — either by the task or by the boss — to knowledge workers who have to manage themselves ↓ profoundly challenges social structure …

“Managing Oneself is a REVOLUTION in human affairs.” … “It also requires an almost 180-degree change in the knowledge workers’ thoughts and actions from what most of us—even of the younger generation—still take for granted as the way to think and the way to act.” …

… “Managing Oneself is based on the very opposite realities: Workers are likely to outlive organizations (and therefore, employers can’t be depended on for designing your life), and the knowledge worker has mobility.” ← in a context

These pages are attention directing tools for navigating a world moving toward unimagined futures.

It’s up to you to figure out what to harvest and calendarize
— working something out in time (1915, 1940, 1970 … 2040 … the outer limit of your concern) — nobody is going to do it for you.

It may be a step forward to actively reject something (rather than just passively ignoring) and then figure out a coping plan for what you’ve rejected.

Your future is between your ears and our future is between our collective ears — it can’t be otherwise. A site exploration starting point

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