#341： The Kaizen Method — Get 1% Better Each Day
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, we talk to Dr. Robert Mauer about the Japanese manufacturing philosophy of "One Small Step Can Change Your Life" or "The Kaizen Method" and why it works so well for individuals.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well when it
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comes to self-improvement most people set big audacious goals and setting those goals it feels
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really good because it pumps you up and you feel like you can conquer the world but then
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it happens you have a setback and within a matter of days your fiery ambition to change yourself is
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extinguished and so you're back to where you started only this time it's worse than before
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because now you're saddled with the sting of failure what if i said there's a much more
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effective way to improve yourself and it requires just getting one percent better each day it's
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called the kaizen method and while it might sound like a mystical japanese philosophy passed down by
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wise bearded sages who lived in secret caves been watching ninjago lately with my son it actually
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has a surprisingly american and modern origin my guest today has written a book about this
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philosophy of small continuous improvement used by japanese car makers for over 60 years his name
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is robert mauer and his book is one small step can change your life the kaizen way today on the show
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robert explains the american roots of this japanese manufacturing process and how the japanese reintroduced
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it to america in the 1970s he then digs into the psychology of why the kaizen method of improvement
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works so well not just for organizations but for individuals and then we end our conversation getting
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into some really practical ways you can incorporate kaizen in your life and get better one small step
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at a time if you're tired of being on the self-improvement roller coaster this episode is for you
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after the show is over check out the show notes at aom.is slash kaizen that's k-i-z-e-n
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robert mauer welcome to the show it's a pleasure to be here so you wrote a book called one small
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step can change your life the kaizen way before we get into what kaizen is because we're going to get
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into detail what that is how did you get started into researching this this japanese it's a
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manufacturing philosophy really that got exported back to the united states but how did you what's
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your background where you got interested in this i'm a clinical psychologist i have an unusual position
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i work in a family medicine clinic a family medicine residency clinic so we're training family
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practice doctors so i get to go in the room and see the positions as they interview patients for all the
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things that bring people to a primary care clinic so here was an opportunity to try to identify people
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at risk for future problems and try to help them before they had made poor marital choices before
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their children started developing problems before they got depressed but we had no tools so long story
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short i began researching long-term studies where they follow people from birth until they were 40 50 60 70
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years old to see what skills allowed people in spite of adversity and setbacks to continue to thrive
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not just in jobs not just in health not just in relationships but all three and there were just
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about two dozen studies that have done this and um but what led me to kaizen was um seeing that i one day i
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was looking at a newspaper article and it said that the toyota lexus for the umpteenth year was the most
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high quality car made and i thought well maybe there's something metaphorically
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about building a car that i could use to help people build their lives and that led me to a book
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called the machine that changed the world which you think would be about computers but it's actually
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about cars and that led me to dr deming and kaizen okay so it all started with helping people make big
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changes in their life that are good for themselves and making sure those changes endure that's a big
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problem right and in the medical field make sure people take their medications making sure
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people eat right making sure people exercise exactly for our audience who aren't familiar with
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kaizen he tell us what it is like what are the what's the big tenant in like the history of its
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development well it was in some ways a two-pronged story in the one sense it's an ancient asian
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philosophy the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step because kaizen has two definitions
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but the one is making extremely small steps in order to accomplish a large goal and the other
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definition is looking at very very small moments to learn large lessons but the modern history of it
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is as you know the u.s entered world war ii very suddenly with very little human or material resource
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so a group of americans led by a man named edward deming tried to as we were turning car factories
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into tank factories with very little resource tried to help make the products as good as they could
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so they would tell each worker on the assembly line can see if you can find even the smallest ways to
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try to improve the process of a product because again we couldn't make big wholesale changes and
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they found to their surprise these very small incremental changes led to big innovative results and so
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that the idea of taking small steps to accomplish large goals became part of the manufacturing process
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after world war ii deming and his colleagues introduced this to japan as they were rebuilding
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out of the rubble of the war and small struggling firms like toyota embraced kaizen they call it their
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soul to and began building some of the highest quality products in the world and so yeah with the kaizen
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went to the car manufacturing basically the the manufacturer the company gave the on-the-ground
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employees the permission to stop the conveyor belt so to speak and make those changes which was often
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unheard of in american factors like you never stopped the conveyor belt like you kept it going no matter
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what but there they were they stop it if you can improve it let's do that right then and there
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exactly it's one of the ways that kaizen works in terms of preventing mistakes because as as you say
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very very well prior to deming and kaizen cars would go down the assembly line and at the end of the line
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workers would look to see how many problems there were and no matter how much you paid for the car
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whether it was a ford or ferrari you still came back to the dealer a week later with 10 things that
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needed to be fixed well deming and his colleague at toyota named taiichi ono decided we're not going
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to do that cars going down the assembly line as you pointed out and somebody sees a scratch on the
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fender they stopped the assembly line bring in the supplier the engineer and tried to fix it there and
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everybody thought deming was crazy how can you mass manufacture a product when you're stopping at every
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few feet to fix it turned out to be the most efficient way to build cars and since then
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everybody's adopted that philosophy and actually what ended up happening were these japanese manufacturers
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toyota in particular like they started beating the big car american car companies ford chevy and like
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gm actually sent people to toyota to figure out how can we implement this kaizen so it's kind of weird
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like it started in the united states went to japan and then americans had to go back to japan to
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rediscover this thing it's very true that's exactly the history of it yeah in some ways it makes sense
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because after world war ii we were the only industrial giant still standing people were buying our cars and
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refrigerators no matter how we built them so until the japanese started to really make inroads into our
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consumer world nobody got interested in deming and kaizen what's interesting is like why i mean so
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these car companies saw what deming was doing right with to with the democracy the armory of democracy
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right building these things really fast and it was working why did they decide like nah we're going to go
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back to the way we used to do things um before the war i think they probably assumed it was cheaper
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um if you're building 7 000 cars a day it just seemed logical to keep the assembly line moving and fix the
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problems later it just it just seemed logical to them and because they had no competition
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and a huge consumer base of soldiers coming back from the war wanting to buy new cars it was hard for
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them to try to take a harder look at what was happening even when the japanese started to make
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huge inroads they assumed it was because the japanese workers were more docile that it was
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an easier environment for manufacturers it took them a long time to decide all right i guess we have to
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adopt this right and i think in the book you highlight there was this one particular gm factory
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it was like the worst factory gm factory in america but they brought in people from toyota and they
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basically they turned this thing around like what happened there it's an amazing story because i've i
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have heard interviews with the workers at premont it was originally a general motors factory and
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evidently uh workers thought the management was so hostile so harsh that the workers actually
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admitted they were sabotaging the cars so uh general motors closed the factory down well as toyota was
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starting and honda was starting to make huge inroads um general motors got desperate and they took a
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their their design of the car and they took the same hostile workers back and this time they used
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deming's management methods including kaizen and at the same time they were automating as many of their
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factories as they could well a year later the highest quality cars in the entire general motors line
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were the ones built with these workers in fremont i heard the same workers interviewed after toyota took
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over and some of them believe it or not would actually go to the showroom the dealer showrooms and watch
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people test drive the car they had such pride in what they were doing so it turned out it wasn't the car it
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wasn't the it wasn't the labor problems it would turned out it was the manufacturing process that
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gave people dignity and a sense of importance that kaizen provided because what kaizen asked each worker
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to do is to go to work each day thinking what small step could i possibly take to improve the process or
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product so people went to went to work with a sense of creativity and empowerment that nobody invested
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them with ever ever before and then speaking of how they were you know sabotaging the cars like i think
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they were leaving whiskey bottles and door frames and things like that yeah yes yeah yeah imagine how
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angry these people were it's just hard to fathom knowing they were putting their jobs at risk but
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they were that angry so yeah kaizen it's all about empowering people on the ground making small
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incremental changes this goes against sort of the grain what we think how change is done in your
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experience with working with patients working with doctors and just working with other individuals in
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this sort of behavior change what are the big myths that people have about change both personally and
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in an organization well the best it's a great question the best answer is go back and kind of
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define the alternative to kaizen because basically what the western notion of change is what we call
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innovation which we define as taking the largest possible steps to accomplish a large goal and for many
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people in many organizations that's the only way they think of change we're going to bring in some
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consultants and design some new pro new program it's going to cost a fortune to implement if i want to lose
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weight i'm going to go to the gym get a trainer go on a radical diet we tend to think in terms of big
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problem and big solution it goes completely against the western mindset to think that we could get to the same
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goal sometimes even faster with small steps as opposed to big huge leaps and as everyone listening
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to this has discovered at some point in our lives sometimes those big steps lead to big falls and
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sometimes the price of that fall is more than we ever bargained to pay so it isn't that we're making
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trying to make innovation bad or wrong but the question is if it's not practical or hasn't worked are you
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free to take very small steps to accomplish the same goal so the the biggest myth to go back to
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your question is thinking that the first of all the only way to change is through big steps and the
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second big myth is to think that basically you're trying to make it to decide or am i going to take a
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particularly in the creative process am i going to take a small step or a big step because when you
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look at creativity because one of our research projects we looked at breakthrough products everything from
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the internet to the microwave uh to barcodes um and so many great inventions came from some incredibly
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small inconsequential moment that somebody got intrigued with and out of that small curiosity
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breakthrough products came whether it's disney world or disneyland the credit card i could
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take you through any and all of those they were all but some incredibly ridiculously small moments
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somebody thought now that's interesting yeah it's interesting like you said we we put this
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premont innovation we think innovation just happens like it's like sort of like this lightning bolt from
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the heavens but as you say really most innovation it's very slow and it's the result of small steps
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till you got to that point yeah it's the old story we all grew up with the children's story of the
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tortoise and the hare we just thought it was a children's story and not a metaphor for our lives so besides
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manufacturing companies i mean how have you seen kaizen be incorporated in the lives of regular folks
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for example with your work with doctors and helping the helping patients you know live healthier lives
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i mean what have what have like what are some of the success stories you've seen a value to kaizen
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particularly in a medical setting is that you're trying to get people to make life changes and everybody
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that walks through the door of a clinic and i'm sure everybody listening to this knows that we should
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exercise we should eat well we should get enough sleep we should drink more water this is not a
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mystery but everybody's got very good reasons why they don't have the time the energy or it just seems
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overwhelming so getting somebody that's got a job and children to raise or all kinds of
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responsibilities for elderly parents any of those kinds of things will say you're crazy i don't have
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if i had time to do that i would but can you get somebody to exercise one minute a day
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every day um can you get somebody for example to what happens of course is if you're exercising a
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minute a day after a while what tends to happen is you develop a habit and it starts to increase
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i remember years ago before i ever met dr deming and discovered kaizen there was a world famous
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pain expert at ucla giving a two-night course for people with cancer pain and at the end of the first
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night he said to the group i want you all to go home and meditate for one minute well i thought that
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was the dumbest idea i ever heard of so i waited for the audience to leave and as politely as i
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could i asked the professor why one minute it's not enough to do anybody any good he very patiently
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asked me how old is meditation i said thousands of years old he said that's absolutely correct
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there's a very good chance everybody in this room has heard of meditation before tonight
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those who like the idea have already found a book or a teacher and they're doing it
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for the rest of the people in this room meditation is the worst idea they ever heard of
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i'd rather they go home and meditate for one minute than not meditate for 30 they may discover they like
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it they may forget to stop which is what all the current research on kaizen argues if you can get
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people to put a toe in the water to start something it'll eventually become a habit we'd like people to
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drink more water so getting people just to put a bottle of water at their desk another in the car
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another where they shave or put on their makeup and you're developing a pattern because the good
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news is the brain's a creature of habit the bad news is the brain's a creature of habit anything you do
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regularly the brain starts to commit cells to simplest example i can think of is advertising
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you know if you draw two golden arches and ask people what it is they'll say mcdonald's and some of
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these people have never set foot in one of their restaurants but they've seen those 15 second
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commercials over and over and over again and so they can tell you three or four of the products
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of a restaurant they've never been into so advertisers know repetition is what the brain decides is
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important so if you can get people to do something just just momentarily just for 15 seconds 30 seconds
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a minute you can get people to make changes there's a wonderful kaizen technique called mind sculpture
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there's a book by that name that takes people through the technical parts of it and my book
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talks about the applications of it and what it is they discovered uh in some athletes who had injured
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themselves and who recovered much faster than anybody dreamed they were using this technique called
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mind sculpture you can use it for sports you can use it for public speaking you can use it if you're
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afraid to go out on a date you can even use it to exercise and what it's based on the premise that
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if you close your eyes imagine yourself for example in the gym picturing lifting reaching down to lift
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the weights and again you're you're you're not moving a muscle you can feel the muscles in your
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arms start to tense you can feel your breathing increase again in retrospect based on it based on a simple
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principle with your eyes closed your brain is so stupid it doesn't know where it is and it's sending
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perfect messages to the body so if i'm if i have if i'm afraid of public speaking and i close my eyes
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picture myself in a classroom with 30 students half of them on their smartphones if they're not
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25 i'm still sleeping but i imagine what i'd say voice tone gestures just 15 20 30 seconds at the
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most at a time one two three times a day at most again eventually the brain decides this is important
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and commits commits the body to it so it's a wonderful technique for people that would like
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to make changes but have close to no motivation at all because mind sculpture takes almost no time
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according to the research in this book right you're actually if you're if you're doing that with
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exercise i'll actually do it on an airplane close my eyes and imagine i'm in the gym or running
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and according to the data you're burning 25 of the calories you'd actually burn in real time and
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the brain's practicing doing it perfectly so basically you take any any task that you're you're
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feeling overwhelmed by you're putting off and just mentally rehearsing you're doing it yeah and i
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guess the trick is to get as vivid as possible with it yes as much as you can again your inner
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your inner visions are never as clear as the outside ones but you're picking the the book starts
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off with a very famous british javelin olympic athlete who had injured his shoulders a few months
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before the olympics was obviously had his arm in a tourniquet but imagined himself in the olympic
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stadium reaching for the javelin and picking it up and throwing it again while he was his shoulder
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and arm was immobile and went on to win a medal just because he again practiced it perfectly some some of the
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olympic ski teams spend half their time practicing in a classroom going down the mountain in their mind
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because again the muscles are practicing doing it right instead of practicing falling so that's that's
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an easy first step just thinking about doing the thing and visualizing it not just thinking about
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it yeah visualizing it is key all right so let's look at some more and more brass tack things that
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people can do with kaizen and like you said a lot of this stuff it's going to seem it's going to seem
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like the doc the guy who said just meditate for a minute you're like how is this going to work so like in
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the book you talk about one of the first steps is to ask small questions so what do you mean by i mean
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what are some examples of small questions and trying to apply kaizen to a task and that that one i stole
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from the deming and toyota because when because what as toyota was rebuilding after the war deming
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simply asked each of the toyota workers to ask themselves a question and the question was what small
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trivial step could i take that may improve the process or product what deming suspected and we still
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believe to be true though nobody knows why is the brain cannot reject the question any question you
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ask repeatedly the brain's compelled to pay attention to and start its own google search it's a really
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bizarre uh finding about the brain if i'm doing a five-day program say in a hotel for a group and i'll
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say to them first day what color car is parked three cars to the right of yours in the parking lot
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they look at me like that's the dumbest question i ever heard i mean of course it is i ask them the
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same stupid question on tuesday by wednesday at the earliest breath thursday at the latest
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pulling into the parking lot with far more interesting things on their mind a place in
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the brain with the funny name of hippocampus will say to them that fool is going to ask me again about
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the color of the car and they're forced to store an answer in short-term memory the brain cannot reject
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the question the trick is that the question has to be small enough that it doesn't make the person
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afraid so if i if the question i ask is how can i be thin by the end of the month how am i getting
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married by the end of the year how am i going to make a fortune in the next six months the bigger the
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question the more it triggers fear in the brain and overwhelms the creative process if you make the
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question small and trivial but ask it each day whether it's what would what what activity would make
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me more joyful in life or what it what it is i could do in the next week or so that would make
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me more productive just asking the question patiently once or twice a day and the brain takes
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on the google search and as every one of your listeners can probably attest all of us have had
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the experience where you're in the shower you're driving to work and all of a sudden you got a solution
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to a problem because the brain percolated on it and eventually in its own inefficient but magnificent
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way solve the problem that's great so let's give like specific examples here let's say someone is
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trying to pay off their student loans right and i guess the wrong question would be how can i pay off
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my student loans by the end of the year again we're not trying to make innovation bad or wrong you could
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ask that question and if all of a sudden you get a great answer that's fantastic most of us get stuck
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and overwhelmed by the question which is what you're suggesting so the alternative would be
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what small step could i take today that could save me save me some money whether it's instead of getting
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starbucks going to 7-eleven for coffee whether it's taking the bike instead of the bus any small way you
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can begin to reduce your financial expenditures now you think well i got thirty thousand dollars in debt and
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you want me just to save two dollars on a cup of coffee you're right it's not going to it'll take
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you two generations to pay off the debt but you're training the brain to start to look for ways to save
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money and so you're programming the brain for a process you wanted to engage in so that would be
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one way to deal with another would another using that same example just asking the question who who can i
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ask that could help me find ways to to manage this debt any more creatively uh just asking the
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question once a day and eventually you may find yourself uh looking at government agencies looking
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at different programs because there's a dozen different programs to help student student debt get
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resolved but the idea of sitting down and spending two hours on the internet can be overwhelming to
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people the idea of just asking the question and letting the brain percolate on it may be a much
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easier and more acceptable strategy right so you're basically trying to kickstart your brain into
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thinking small with these small questions and when those will sort of it'll snowball eventually with
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the question i thought this is a great opportunity to use kaizen with other people like say you're a
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manager or even a parent this would be a great opportunity like questions are a great way to help
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others implement kaizen in their own life it's a good good coaching opportunity yes exactly in fact i was
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i was watching an interview on a tv show with yo yo ma the most famous cellist and one of the most
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famous musicians in the world and he was talking about the fact his father set very high standards
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but each day very very small steps that he could accomplish so the idea of creating small victories
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allows the team to develop allows confidence to develop and the other thing about small steps
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particularly in the workplace is you don't know which small step is going to turn out to be huge
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as i said there's so many breakthrough products from the credit cards at disneyland that turned
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there was some small moment that the laser that nobody thought was going to turn out to be because
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you don't know when you take a small step what's going to end up staying small and what's going to
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become huge yeah i was thinking this would be like my kids like whenever they get frustrated
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instead of like trying to figure it out for themselves like instead of doing it for them it's like
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ask them a stupid small question and help them solve their own problem we talked about mind
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sculptures that's basically thinking very small thoughts and again people might think okay how
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is just visualizing me doing the task going to help but as you said it can help a lot but then after
00:25:18.320
thinking small thoughts and using this visualization practice which doesn't take hardly any time at all
00:25:23.100
you can do it while you're on an airplane we got to take small actions i mean how small are we
00:25:27.400
talking here i mean is it is it like literally like a minute of meditation small like where that's not
00:25:31.140
gonna like we're gonna think like basically is that the the threshold like that's not gonna do
00:25:35.440
anything is that when you know you've gotten small enough um the the criteria for the smallness
00:25:41.200
is the step is so ridiculously small that it requires no willpower self-control or discipline
00:25:47.920
um that there's no not going to be any pushback that's how you know it's a small enough step
00:25:54.240
and a lot of it's in the mind of the beholder so for some people that hate exercise feel overwhelmed
00:26:00.140
by their life if they can exercise if they can stand in front of the tv during one commercial
00:26:05.220
uh or at least you know the 60 seconds that the commercials run uh and just walk in place as fast
00:26:12.100
as they can during one commercial or doing two commercials whatever's doable um then eventually
00:26:18.820
they start to develop you know when if you talk to anybody who exercises they initially they hated it
00:26:24.080
then they tolerate it now they miss it if they don't do it so you're trying to develop a habit and you do that
00:26:29.840
a minute at a time um my favorite example is it was done in pittsburgh and then it was done in ireland
00:26:36.780
where they went into a huge hard-rise building went to the sixth floor found a dozen people and say
00:26:42.420
congratulations who had an exercise since high school say congratulations christmas has come early
00:26:47.700
here is a lifetime gift certificate to the health club across the street a gift certificate for your
00:26:52.660
trainer for a year went to the 12th floor of the same building another dozen people in a different
00:26:57.740
firm that hadn't exercised since high school all they asked them to do on monday was go into the
00:27:02.600
stairwell go up one flight of stairs back to their floor back to their desk back to work
00:27:07.140
tuesday go into the stairwell go up one flight at a single step back to their floor back to their desk
00:27:12.540
back to work wednesday two steps you get the idea every day of the work week adding one step to this
00:27:17.560
ridiculous regimen but come back one year three years five years later which of those two groups do you
00:27:22.800
think is exercising better with better cardiovascular fitness lower cholesterol lower weight the people
00:27:28.700
with the health club are the steppers and of course the answer i think is pretty obvious the steppers
00:27:33.300
so if you can get people to do whatever it is they're resistant to for whatever number of minutes they
00:27:39.200
are sure they can do it because it requires no conscious effort on their part then eventually the
00:27:45.860
brain develops a habit for it there's research out of texas showing if you can exercise if you
00:27:51.560
exercise three minutes at a time 10 times a day you get most not all of the same cardiac benefit
00:27:58.240
you would get from exercising 30 minutes and of course it's a lot easier to find three minutes at work
00:28:04.740
to take a quick walk around the block or go up two flights of stairs than it is to go to the gym for a
00:28:09.740
half hour in the middle of a work day that's crazy and so i mean i could yeah you can use this for
00:28:14.020
paying off debt so it's like i'm gonna save five a dollar today have you seen this used this small
00:28:20.220
step used to help people quit smoking in your work yes yeah for some people innovation is the answer
00:28:26.760
to smoking because i just saw a person this morning that woke up one day and decided to quit and she's
00:28:32.340
now 30 days without smoking now that looks like innovation but it's deceptive because if you ask her
00:28:39.860
how long have you been thinking about quitting it's been a slow incremental process of kind of
00:28:45.300
contemplating consideration discussion and debate within her mind before that fateful day when
00:28:51.900
people made the leap into innovation so sometimes the steps i'm sorry i lost your question but
00:28:58.120
sometimes the small steps lead to to big ones that the person hadn't even anticipated but i think i
00:29:04.700
lost your question brad sorry no yeah that's fine no you were talking about smoking like using small
00:29:09.320
steps to quit smoking oh smoking yeah yeah yeah so sometimes innovation in fact when you look at the
00:29:14.940
research cold turkey the person just got up that day and quit it looks like innovation but in fact
00:29:20.880
is usually something the person contemplated for weeks months or years before that fateful day
00:29:27.180
the other way kaizen's used for smoking cut the cigarette down or you just you you only smoke half of it
00:29:34.440
or the one of the big problems for people who have trouble quitting is that they need a cigarette the
00:29:40.260
moment they get up in the morning and so you ask them if they're willing to either take a shower first
00:29:45.880
have a cup of coffee first wait another 30 seconds or a minute before they have that first cigarette
00:29:51.520
because all of the most successful habit breaking techniques for smoking involve making small changes
00:29:59.080
so instead of having the cigarette in in your car can you stand outside the car can you have the coffee
00:30:05.380
without the cigarette just trying to break the patterns that smoking is associated with get rid of
00:30:10.920
the ashtrays in your house those kinds of things anything that breaks up the the habit of having
00:30:16.660
associating the cigarette either with um certain friends or with this the coffee or with car or
00:30:23.740
whatever so um those are some of the ways we use kaizen for cigarettes particularly in people that are
00:30:30.440
really struggling with it and in the book you hide you give great other great examples of you know
00:30:34.320
habits that people i'm sure a lot of people have tried starting their own life but if you apply
00:30:38.320
kaizen to it your success rate will go up significantly like journal writing a lot of you
00:30:42.860
like i'm gonna write in my journal every day and they think they have to write for 30 minutes but you
00:30:46.260
said no just write for a minute and then add a minute every week or so yes in fact i give you a
00:30:51.740
personal example because when i got the contract to write this book i do not like to write it's one of
00:30:56.680
my least favorite things to do on the planet and so i thought well let's see if kaizen works so i the
00:31:02.480
contract gave me a year to write the book um and so i said all right i'm gonna just write all i'm all
00:31:09.000
i'm promising to do is to write 60 seconds a day that's it if i've done that it's a success and of
00:31:14.980
course like with the meditation at the ucla professor um originally i just kept to my agreement but
00:31:21.240
eventually of course i forgot to stop and that's what you're counting on with kaizen you're building a
00:31:26.140
habit the other way kaizen works bread is that you're you're programming the brain for the leap you want
00:31:31.920
it to make let me give you a simple example if i have a room full of people and i say how many of
00:31:36.640
you remember the exact instant when you master driving nobody raises their hand we all remember
00:31:43.500
kind of lurching through a grocery store parking lot with this car we could barely control
00:31:47.940
and yet at some point you're driving down the highway completely absorbed by the conversation with
00:31:54.740
your passenger or by the conversation on the radio completely oblivious to the fact the brain is now
00:32:00.860
making very complex life-saving decisions moment by moment while we're behind the wheel of a car
00:32:06.640
the brain learned it incrementally and made the leap into innovation on its own so again there's an
00:32:14.260
artificial distinction between kaizen innovation even big steps uh usually are preceded by many small
00:32:20.980
ones also kind of coupled with small actions you also encourage reinforcing these actions with small
00:32:27.440
rewards so how how would that look on a practical level sometimes people think when i lose all this
00:32:33.360
weight i'm going to go out and buy a new wardrobe and i'm going to do this and that um if you can find
00:32:38.980
some very small way to reward yourself again usually not with food unless that's not an issue for you
00:32:44.860
even if it's just calling up a friend who's going to say great work or calling up somebody to brag
00:32:50.500
anything positive that you're going to allow yourself to do
00:32:54.000
um at the same time or afterwards one of the ways i got myself floss because flossing is one of the
00:32:59.600
most useful things you can do for your health it actually helps prevent heart disease believe it or
00:33:04.220
not but i just never had time for it so what i would do is i'd put the floss right on top of the
00:33:09.760
remote control so that while i was watching tv i could floss so if you can associate something you
00:33:15.320
don't want to do with something you love then um it tends to be easier maybe that's why all these
00:33:20.980
new gyms have fancy tvs in front of the treadmills so that you could do something you love while you're
00:33:26.820
doing something you just as soon not have to do i think that's called uh there's a paper i think
00:33:30.820
right about it's like temptation bundling is what it's called i think i've heard it referred to as
00:33:35.040
that yeah and in business one of the things that that we now have enormous research on is that
00:33:40.060
giving big rewards for big suggestions turns out to be a bad idea the average award in a u.s car
00:33:46.880
factory if you make a big suggestion is over 400 in toyota it's three dollars now the difference is
00:33:54.080
people have to feel they're being paid fairly for their labors or all bets are off but if you think
00:33:59.440
there's a big reward waiting for a big what are you looking for you want the big reward and for 450
00:34:05.160
am i going to share it with the three people next to standing next to me on the assembly line
00:34:10.120
not very likely so they found that small amounts three dollars or less and you get you get on the
00:34:17.020
average of a hundred more uh suggestions from an employee than if you're offering them four hundred
00:34:22.620
dollars but again they have to feel they're being paid fairly so we've been talking using kaizen to
00:34:28.280
solve big problems right it's like going back to that that chinese phrase you know journey of a
00:34:33.260
thousand steps thousand miles begins with a single step but you also talk about you can you can use
00:34:37.480
kaizen in a way like instead of solving big problems using kaizen using kaizen to find small
00:34:43.420
problems that you can fix that will provide a big payoff in your life any examples of that yeah because
00:34:48.840
when you look at so many breakthrough products that they turned out to be some small frustration that
00:34:54.980
other people just kind of endured this person got intrigued with we got the credit card from two
00:35:00.500
new york city attorneys who are out to dinner arguing about the check until they both realized they didn't
00:35:05.980
have any money fortunately one of them lived a few blocks from the restaurant he called his wife she
00:35:11.440
came down with some cash on the walk back to the apartment um the two of them remembered that moment's
00:35:17.000
embarrassment in the restaurant thought well there has to be an easier way to pay for rest restaurant
00:35:22.080
bills and diners club our first credit card was invented that night um the the stories going around
00:35:28.180
about uber and airbnb are about people who again had just a small idea the airbnb story has been told
00:35:35.160
many times these two guys who were just about to leave their apartment um and there was a big
00:35:40.900
convention in san francisco there was a shortage of rooms so they put a list on craig list just to um
00:35:47.440
rent out their their um air mattresses which is how they got their name and that went to airbnb
00:35:54.460
um and we got barcodes from a guy that was trying to figure out how to help grocery stores with their
00:36:00.620
checkout process couldn't figure out what to do one day in complete frustration he goes off to the
00:36:05.820
beach sticking his hand in the sand in frustration took his hand out saw the sand sticking to the
00:36:11.540
grooves on his fingers and thought that's it barcodes were invented that day so so many breakthrough
00:36:17.280
products and ideas come from some momentary frustration or annoyance or irritation somebody
00:36:22.980
thought you know i think there's an idea here on how to make it better and so like look for those
00:36:27.740
small annoyances in your life and and fix them and you'd be surprised how much that will improve
00:36:32.080
your life just getting rid of those annoyances exactly and it may turn out to be something that
00:36:36.160
the rest of the world is interested in too right right you know an example from my my father-in-law
00:36:40.620
they uh his garb the garbage can in their house was like you know under a sink where a lot of people
00:36:45.040
keep their garbage can but uh it was annoying because the garbage can didn't come out and so like you
00:36:49.420
put you throw stuff in there but sometimes it wouldn't make it and so you'd have to like dig in the back
00:36:54.100
to like find the trash it didn't make the garbage can so he decided like make this pull out thing
00:36:58.600
that he puts the garbage can on and so you can pull the garbage can out throw it away then push
00:37:02.980
it back in and he says like it's it's been it was a big improvement in his life there's like a daily
00:37:07.020
annoyance of his and he fixed it it took you know 20 minutes and it might seem stupid insignificant but
00:37:12.180
like it's one of those it's like an example of like a little thing that can improve your life
00:37:15.480
significantly yes and sometimes again sometimes those things lead to products that the world's waiting for
00:37:20.980
too they they just didn't know they're waiting for it right as you you do this kaizen process you build
00:37:28.260
up this habit this you're building up habit you're creating this new groove in your brain does this
00:37:32.100
carry over into other domain you know does it transfer over to other domains of your life say if you
00:37:37.160
use kaizen to i don't know start exercising regularly will that allow you to take on other challenges
00:37:44.220
easier because you've developed that ability like that kaizen process within you yeah that's what all the
00:37:49.560
research argues for and the obvious example is the one you gave where if you start exercising all of
00:37:55.280
a sudden you're kind of thinking twice before having that second donut because you're going to have to
00:38:00.100
drag that extra weight around when you go around the block tomorrow so exercise tends to increase
00:38:06.020
your interest in taking better care of yourself in other areas so yeah it doesn't work in a couple
00:38:12.120
ways but one of them we think is once you start having small victories you then start wanting to have
00:38:17.460
more small victories which leads you to look for other places in your life where you can make small
00:38:22.740
changes so just starting to throw away the first two bites of a donut and eating the rest of it
00:38:28.180
eventually what you're training the brain is i don't have to eat everything i see so now the thing
00:38:33.180
that makes kaizen hard is that many of us myself included we tend to make changes when life when we've
00:38:38.960
made a mistake in life so it's those decade birthdays when you think about oh my god i wish i had spent
00:38:44.220
more time doing whatever or your doctor scares you with a diagnosis or relationship ends and many of
00:38:50.120
us at that point are pretty angry with ourselves that we've done something foolish and then when
00:38:55.260
you're angry at yourself it's hard to think about small steps you want to correct the problem
00:39:00.060
yesterday so this voice in your head will stop telling you what a loser you are so in addition to
00:39:05.760
kind of our cultural focus on innovation it's hard for some people to adopt kaizen because they're so
00:39:12.160
angry at themselves they're desperate for improvement and i think the other hard part about kaizen is
00:39:17.420
that it can be it's so easy that you don't believe it's going to work exactly yep and that's why i wrote
00:39:23.960
the book was that people could see all the research on it um but you're right it defies common sense
00:39:29.220
doesn't seem logical or possible uh to accomplish in small steps what a big leap would well robert
00:39:34.880
this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book in your work
00:39:39.240
uh there's a website science of excellence.com which has a lot of the research that we've been
00:39:44.060
talking about and uh the the book on kaizen that you've been referencing one small step can change
00:39:49.540
your life there's also a second book on how to apply kaizen in the workplace called the spirit of
00:39:54.240
kaizen and my latest book is about that what makes kaizen so powerful and that is that it is kind of
00:40:01.180
quiets the fear mechanism in the brain so the third book is called mastering fear
00:40:05.580
fantastic we'll be sure to link to those in the show notes robert thank you so much for your time
00:40:09.540
it's been an absolute pleasure and the same for me i appreciate your questions very much
00:40:13.300
my guest today was robert mauer he's the author of the book one small step can change your life the
00:40:17.540
kaizen way it's available on amazon.com also check out his website at science of excellence.com
00:40:22.380
where you find more information about his research and work and find more information about the other
00:40:26.200
books he's published also check out our show notes at aom.is slash kaizen where you find links
00:40:30.980
to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the
00:40:46.400
art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness
00:40:50.220
website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the show i've got something out of it while you've been
00:40:53.600
listening to it i appreciate if you take one minute to give us review on itunes stitcher or
00:40:57.140
whatever it is you use to listen to your podcast or tell a few friends i would appreciate that as
00:41:01.460
well helps out a lot as always thank you for your continued support until next time this is brett mckay