00:00 Introducing Kaizen for careers
02:00 What Kaizen actually means (and why it works)
06:30 Gemba: why observation beats speculation
11:15 Muda: eliminating waste in your work
17:45 Are you busy… or actually productive?
22:10 The risks of “waiting” in your career
25:10 Hansai: the power of reflection
29:00 Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) explained
34:00 Why reflection is often overlooked
38:00 Standardising what works
41:00 Small changes that create big impact
Helen Tupper: Hi, I’m Helen.
Sarah Ellis: And I’m Sarah
Helen Tupper: 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 inform the discussion. So I will let her tell you what we are going to be talking about today.
Sarah Ellis: So today we’re going to be exploring how to Kaizen your squiggly career. And 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. 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,
Helen Tupper: I remember thinking like Kaizen was about continual improvement and then I’m definitely 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 and I think there was like an operations management module, something like that.
Sarah Ellis: It was.
Helen Tupper: Yeah. And was that where that guy. I know he was strategy guy. Anyway, operations management. I remember Kaizen coming off in a little reminiscence and I remember just in time like last in, first in, first out. Do you remember like LIFO and fifo?
Sarah Ellis: Oh yeah, no, I’d forgotten that until you said it.
Helen Tupper: Lifo, fifo. Last in, first out and first in, first out. I think something which I think has since been applied to like recruitment as a, as a thing to worry about. You know, if you’re like you’re last in, you’ll be first out in a restructure. I think it’s, 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 in the back of my brain.
Sarah Ellis: 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 emphasises doing things incrementally better. So 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 or 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 Helen think about me? Or is this a career limiting suggestion? It feels quite accessible, quite easy to make happen.
Helen Tupper: So 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 bought a book into it. So what was the book that you invested in that has informed our conversation today?
Sarah Ellis: 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 what I really liked about it is Sarah went to live in Japan, so she’s from London, journalist and a writer, so she sort of experienced it firsthand. She’s also very honest. It’s not that everything’s perfect. Like, I think people in Japan work really long hours, 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 a beautiful book. I do like a book that occasionally is in colour. Like, it’s got colour, it’s got beautiful illustrations in it.
Helen Tupper: You know, like you’re artsy as well. I reckon it connects, we know, with your brain, though, because you’re quite artsy and creative. I think it sort of brings your, like, intelligence and your creativity together.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah. So I think it’s not like a business book and certainly it doesn’t talk about some of the 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, you know, the importance of getting outside and taking a lunch break and those sorts of things and pausing during your day. Whereas what I’ve now done is sort of gone full on Kaizen. So 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 that’s we’re now going to Kaizen our careers.
Helen Tupper: Helen, I’m excited about it because, yes, I am, because there are new. Having. Having looked at this, they’re 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?
Sarah Ellis: 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 apologies if we are now about to pronounce these completely wrong. 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 that do feel a bit more technical. So the first one is Gemba or Jember. Which one do we think? One. I don’t know.
Helen Tupper: We’re going to go G, E, M,
Sarah Ellis: B, A. Yeah, 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, within a 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. And 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.
Helen Tupper: 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. If you’re 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 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.
Sarah Ellis: So I like this.
Helen Tupper: 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.
Sarah Ellis: 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. So I and I’d had quite a lot of conversations. 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 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.
Helen Tupper: So maybe you’re feeling really overwhelmed. You know, lots of people will say the oh, I’ve got too much to do, not enough time kind of thing, which is, which is a genuine feeling. It’s not that it’s not a genuine feeling but this is like, well, where. What are the facts? You know?
Sarah Ellis: Yeah.
Helen Tupper: 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, feeling is just. We either feel bad or better but actually if you’ve got the data, you, 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 improvements, the data enables that, I think more than just the feeling.
Sarah Ellis: 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 reasons. So I’ve not been very well. I’ve had like a stomach bug 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. 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 like 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 travelled 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. Imagine if you’re six months, then you, then you’d be really broken in a podcast. 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 just being like, oh God, I’m all broken. It’s all over the place. You go, well, that’s the reality of the 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.
Helen Tupper: I’m really enlightening, see if we can
Sarah Ellis: make you feel a bit less broken by the end of our time together. So I actually really liked the next one as well, which is muda. So M U D A And this
Helen Tupper: word, isn’t it muda?
Sarah Ellis: I feel like, yeah, it is nice. And it though it means waste elimination. Which when I did read this, I do, I do remember this a bit from, 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, so, you know, we always say creating, not waiting when it comes to your squiggly career or also, you know,
Helen Tupper: like 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, with 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 cause other people, if they want, yeah, other people aren’t. 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.
Sarah Ellis: It’s like hoping, isn’t it? Like waiting and hoping. The next one I thought was interesting. Like 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 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. I think that was quite interesting.
Helen Tupper: 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.
Sarah Ellis: 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. I also wonder with do as 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, it’s like, it’s a waste. And I was like, oh, yeah, I kind of. I. I buy that. 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. Like, 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. What I want to do in what order around, like, it being 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. And this is funny actually, because this is an email, but there’s an email I want to send that I think is important 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 do you take too much time to do it?
Helen Tupper: So yeah.
Sarah Ellis: And also it’s not like, you know, it’s not such a complicated email, you know, but 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. And I always rile against the kind of don’t want to become a robot thing. But you know the David Allen two minute task 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?
Helen Tupper: Well, I was actually, I was thinking about how to slightly solve. I know what that email is that you’re going to send. But I do find, and this is not an advert for Wispr Flow. And Sarah gets really annoyed. I know she gets so annoyed with me for saying this, but I.
Sarah Ellis: How do they not partner with. How do they not sponsor you? I feel like they should just sponsor you.
Helen Tupper: Just talk to sponsor me all the time. 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 it is really changed my relationship with those tasks because now I just kind of go, I just spiel something on Wispr 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 just wanted to say thank you, blah, blah, whatever I say. And then it formats it all. And it’s never perfect, but I would say it’s like 85 there because I’m disputed. And it formats it all. So all of your paragraphs, everything’s in there.
Sarah Ellis: Kind.
Helen Tupper: 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. It has transformed the mental delay I put on tasks that I’m like, oh, it’s going to take a lot of time. Anyway, back to your actual question, which was not a promotion for Wispr Flow. And it was which one do I. I think combination of motion. I think I waste motion 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. And that’s wasted, wasted motion for me. 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 on 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’ve sort of talked about are interesting 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.
Sarah Ellis: 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 hansai, which is structured reflection, so self reflection or examination. So this is, it’s a reflective pause and you need this practise and they do describe this as a practise for then to help you improve because I guess you can’t improve if you’ve not reflected. And so this links to I think probably like 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 standardised. So the point is that when something works really, really well, you should kind of don’t take that for granted, try and systematise it or standardise it so that then you keep doing what’s working and then you improve, improve what isn’t. And so that first bit, that kind of hands eye bit, I was thinking how, 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 ask, 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. And things like mistake moments. You know, that’s a kind of practise, a practise 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 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 standardise 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 weeks. 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 iteration, I guess is the way to think of it.
Helen Tupper: I am, in listening to you, I was like, oh, this is kind of the. It’s hard a little bit to, you know, 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 PDCA – plan, do, check act – you could just stay at Hansai. There is still value in just having some Hansai, right? So having some reflection. So you want to connect it to action and improvement. But, but if I just think about people that we talk to about like life and work and careers, 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 kind of just stuck going from meeting to meeting. So even getting a bit of a rhythm of reflection or habitual hand sign. But like, you know, like getting that into your day, I, I think that is helpful. And that could just be a question.
Sarah Ellis: That’d be like a three minute mind map. Yeah, that would just be that.
Helen Tupper: A question to start your day with or something to end your week with. What did you 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 actually think just, just start with the reflection. Like it, 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, very hard to do anything without self awareness. I think you’d be more likely to led by other people’s opinions without it. So I think start there. But then I really liked what you said about, okay, so then you, 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, 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 Hansai 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. And that links back to what we always say, which is when Sarah and I run workshops and sessions for companies, we always say what we’re trying to achieve is awareness and action. That’s always what we’re trying to get to. And so that cycle kind of gets you to it as well.
Sarah Ellis: 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 Hansai is the mindset and practise of reflection and then Kaizen is the action of improving. You need Hansai to do Kaizen. Well, because if you were just doing kaizen, right, you’d just be improving. But. But I might improve in a scattergun way. So let’s say I want to improve how we deliver our workshops. If I do no reflection, I’m just going to. Just going to 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 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 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 sort of. I like your checkpoint, your sort of slight build. If we’re allowed to build, are we
Helen Tupper: allowed to do that? Probably not.
Sarah Ellis: But you know, we’re 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. If you’re not doing that reflection.
Helen Tupper: Can I share a reflection on reflection which is a bit better?
Sarah Ellis: Of course. Are you going to use the PDCA cycle to do it? I am.
Helen Tupper: I am not. I’m not. I’m just gonna put my thoughts out into the world. I. Kaizen has been much more popularised as a term than hansai. I 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 in when you think about Han, Kai’s
Sarah Ellis: has much more action, isn’t it? And 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 or 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 were 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 practises 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 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, Sarah 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.
Helen Tupper: I have loved this. I have.
Sarah Ellis: I actually got really into it.
Helen Tupper: Obviously 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’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 Quiz 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 summarise in the podsheet, 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, Gemba, Muda, Hansai and PDCAa, 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?
Sarah Ellis: Gemba. 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. 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, okay, 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 was just no substitute for, like, being in an organisation’s environment. And 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? They 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 really. And then you see it. You see it in, like the office environment, in how they’re set up and they’ve got this, like. There was almost 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 and so kind of. I think more of that for me, it’s something that’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 no, 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, you know, where you’ve just got this 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.
Helen Tupper: I quite like the addition of S to the PDCA. I appreciate it getting lost in acronyms, everybody. But that is the S stands for standardised. So you standardise 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 standardising, like, because I think, you know, if you’re constantly thinking, 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.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah.
Helen Tupper: And I’m just wondering, for things that I do repeatedly in my week, where could standardisation 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 mooder. But I really like that. That particularly the S. Like the standardised. What. What could be standardised? To make better use of my abilities, I suppose.
Sarah Ellis: 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 standardisation could potentially take that away. But I think what’s.
Helen Tupper: Well, it gives you it.
Sarah Ellis: Or. Or that’s what I was going to say. Or it gives you it. Right. So if you’re standardising 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
Helen Tupper: I share just a very simple way that I think that just worked well just to bring case people.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah.
Helen Tupper: Think, oh, what does it look like? Because we’ve done this already. So. So we have changed our agendas for internal meetings to a decision/discussion agenda. 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 don’t have to do any of that. Just there is just an agenda for a meeting 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. And that means that I can put that energy onto other things, coming up with ideas, solving problems, doing new stuff, much better use. So that’s where I think the standardisation creates freedom for me.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah. And we had an example, actually, where I had a meeting with you and someone else in our team where I hadn’t done that. And actually I could really. 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 done a. Because we haven’t standardised it as much as we could yet. Like, we definitely have standardised 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 cogs all have to turn.
Helen Tupper: They’re not connecting for a little while. These cogs aren’t. And then you connect on what we’re talking about and then we’re like, oh, now we get going. But it’s at least five minutes of like that. Yeah.
Sarah Ellis: And. Well, 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 things across the team. 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 kaizuzing. Kaizening.
Helen Tupper: Your kaizening all over the place. Hands are your day. I love it.
Sarah Ellis: Well, I think that book really is more about Kaizening your life. That’s, you know, like, that is much more like, you could do it for your relationships, you can do it for your health. And I think it’s. What’s interesting is it never comes across as being relentless. So, you know, you could be like, wow, crikey. 19 improvements from every person who works in your company every year could feel really relentless. But actually, it just feels like small, realistic, getting better. It’s funny how, like, the framing makes a big difference.
Helen Tupper: You know, you start at the start. You were like. Because I’ve always thought Kaizen’s continual improvement, which maybe has that relentless feel to it, but when you said good change, I’m like, there’s what’s bad about good change? Good change is good change. I like it.
Sarah Ellis: 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 Helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com. That’s everything for this week, and back with you again soon. Bye for now.
Helen Tupper: Bye, everyone.