Continual Improvement

It’s interesting to note the prevalence of companies that subscribe to the ideals of Continual Improvement. It seems like when American companies adopted the Japanese concept of Quality Control, they also copied the Japanese improvement model.

Continual Improvement is undoubtedly a powerful concept (look at Toyota’s success), and as such, I have decided to adopt it as my personal guiding principle, in the hope that it will bring me the same kind of success that companies employing it enjoy.

While there exist no formal set of rules dictating what exactly constitutes Continual Improvement (after all, it simply is an attitude, and the exact implementation varies from company to company), there are informal guidelines that one can follow.

1) Constantly striving for better results

This basically takes the idea of non-complacency one step further. In essence, one must never rest on one’s laurels and instead constantly seek improvement. To this end, I shall write post-mortems (for some activities involving skills I wish to improve like cooking, dancing, etc) detailing mistakes committed and steps that I will take to correct them. I shall also be selective with regards to what skills to improve, for attempting to apply Continual Improvement to everything will mean that one has no time for anything.

2) Open to criticism and new ideas

Only when one is open to change and to people pointing out his flaws can he improve; if one persists in sticking to his old method of doing things, he will simply repeat his mistakes, and stagnate, mired in the cesspool of mediocrity. One should also seek opinions from others, as alternative perspectives are always useful. This applies particularly to me, as I find that my creative faculties functions best when discussing ideas with others, as compared to attempting to brainstorm alone with a piece of paper.