Kaizen is a Japanese word for continuous improvement, small and repeated improvements, not one bold change made all at once. The philosophy sits exactly between Continuity and Mastery: Continuity gets you showing up every day, Mastery gets you asking how to do it slightly better than the day before.
Key Takeaways
- Kaizen favors small, repeated improvements over one dramatic overhaul.
- The philosophy connects Continuity, showing up daily, with Mastery, asking how to do it better.
- A curriculum or process improved after every cycle can become almost unrecognizable after dozens of iterations.
- The right question isn’t how do I improve everything, it’s what one small improvement can I add this week.
- Accumulation, not a single leap, is what produces long-term difference.
Why This Is Harder Than It Looks
In mentoring work with young people, the curriculum I taught wasn’t the same one I started with. After each session, we reviewed what worked and what didn’t, and adjusted one small piece, an activity here, an example there. We never redesigned the whole program at once, but after dozens of sessions, the curriculum had become something entirely different from where it started.
The idea worth adopting is this: don’t ask how do I improve everything, ask what’s the one small improvement I can add this week. Accumulation, not a leap, is what makes the difference over the long run, which is exactly what Mastery, one of the five elements of The Method, asks of the work.
The Steps
Step 1: Review after each cycle, not just at the end of a project. Waiting until the end loses the specific detail of what worked and what didn’t in each iteration.
Step 2: Choose one small, specific improvement per review, not a list of many. A long list of changes at once is harder to evaluate than a single change tested in isolation.
Step 3: Keep the improvement small enough to implement immediately. An improvement that requires major restructuring stalls the whole cycle.
Step 4: Track the cumulative distance traveled after many cycles, not just the last change. The real evidence of kaizen’s value only shows up looking back over dozens of iterations.
A Worked Example
None of the individual adjustments to the curriculum felt significant on their own, an activity swapped, an example replaced, a slide reordered. But looking back after two years of sessions, the program had transformed into something the first cohort would barely recognize, entirely through small, repeated adjustments.
Closing
Don’t ask how to improve everything at once. Ask what one small improvement you can add this week, and let it accumulate.
FAQ
Doesn’t kaizen move too slowly for urgent problems?
For genuinely urgent problems, a bigger immediate fix may be needed. Kaizen is for the ongoing work that continues long after the urgent fix is done.
How do you know which small improvement to pick each time?
Pick the one issue that came up most clearly in the last review, rather than trying to address everything you noticed.
Can kaizen apply to personal habits, not just processes?
Yes, the same principle applies: one small adjustment reviewed and repeated, rather than an ambitious overhaul attempted all at once.
