The Art of Manliness - #341： The Kaizen Method — Get 1% Better Each Day

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well when it

00:00:18.560 comes to self-improvement most people set big audacious goals and setting those goals it feels

00:00:24.160 really good because it pumps you up and you feel like you can conquer the world but then

00:00:28.120 it happens you have a setback and within a matter of days your fiery ambition to change yourself is

00:00:33.400 extinguished and so you're back to where you started only this time it's worse than before

00:00:37.340 because now you're saddled with the sting of failure what if i said there's a much more

00:00:40.920 effective way to improve yourself and it requires just getting one percent better each day it's

00:00:45.660 called the kaizen method and while it might sound like a mystical japanese philosophy passed down by

00:00:50.520 wise bearded sages who lived in secret caves been watching ninjago lately with my son it actually

00:00:55.240 has a surprisingly american and modern origin my guest today has written a book about this

00:00:59.280 philosophy of small continuous improvement used by japanese car makers for over 60 years his name

00:01:04.180 is robert mauer and his book is one small step can change your life the kaizen way today on the show

00:01:09.100 robert explains the american roots of this japanese manufacturing process and how the japanese reintroduced

00:01:14.260 it to america in the 1970s he then digs into the psychology of why the kaizen method of improvement

00:01:19.220 works so well not just for organizations but for individuals and then we end our conversation getting

00:01:23.500 into some really practical ways you can incorporate kaizen in your life and get better one small step

00:01:28.680 at a time if you're tired of being on the self-improvement roller coaster this episode is for you

00:01:32.580 after the show is over check out the show notes at aom.is slash kaizen that's k-i-z-e-n 0.74

00:01:37.980 robert mauer welcome to the show it's a pleasure to be here so you wrote a book called one small

00:01:56.320 step can change your life the kaizen way before we get into what kaizen is because we're going to get

00:02:02.460 into detail what that is how did you get started into researching this this japanese it's a

00:02:08.600 manufacturing philosophy really that got exported back to the united states but how did you what's

00:02:13.460 your background where you got interested in this i'm a clinical psychologist i have an unusual position

00:02:18.220 i work in a family medicine clinic a family medicine residency clinic so we're training family

00:02:24.160 practice doctors so i get to go in the room and see the positions as they interview patients for all the

00:02:31.340 things that bring people to a primary care clinic so here was an opportunity to try to identify people

00:02:37.240 at risk for future problems and try to help them before they had made poor marital choices before

00:02:43.040 their children started developing problems before they got depressed but we had no tools so long story

00:02:49.260 short i began researching long-term studies where they follow people from birth until they were 40 50 60 70

00:02:57.100 years old to see what skills allowed people in spite of adversity and setbacks to continue to thrive

00:03:04.040 not just in jobs not just in health not just in relationships but all three and there were just

00:03:10.200 about two dozen studies that have done this and um but what led me to kaizen was um seeing that i one day i

00:03:19.080 was looking at a newspaper article and it said that the toyota lexus for the umpteenth year was the most

00:03:24.760 high quality car made and i thought well maybe there's something metaphorically

00:03:29.480 about building a car that i could use to help people build their lives and that led me to a book

00:03:36.000 called the machine that changed the world which you think would be about computers but it's actually

00:03:39.860 about cars and that led me to dr deming and kaizen okay so it all started with helping people make big

00:03:46.100 changes in their life that are good for themselves and making sure those changes endure that's a big

00:03:50.260 problem right and in the medical field make sure people take their medications making sure

00:03:54.060 people eat right making sure people exercise exactly for our audience who aren't familiar with

00:03:59.520 kaizen he tell us what it is like what are the what's the big tenant in like the history of its

00:04:03.940 development well it was in some ways a two-pronged story in the one sense it's an ancient asian

00:04:08.920 philosophy the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step because kaizen has two definitions

00:04:14.220 but the one is making extremely small steps in order to accomplish a large goal and the other

00:04:20.480 definition is looking at very very small moments to learn large lessons but the modern history of it

00:04:26.880 is as you know the u.s entered world war ii very suddenly with very little human or material resource

00:04:32.600 so a group of americans led by a man named edward deming tried to as we were turning car factories

00:04:39.360 into tank factories with very little resource tried to help make the products as good as they could

00:04:44.600 so they would tell each worker on the assembly line can see if you can find even the smallest ways to

00:04:51.380 try to improve the process of a product because again we couldn't make big wholesale changes and

00:04:57.140 they found to their surprise these very small incremental changes led to big innovative results and so

00:05:04.340 that the idea of taking small steps to accomplish large goals became part of the manufacturing process

00:05:11.220 after world war ii deming and his colleagues introduced this to japan as they were rebuilding

00:05:16.920 out of the rubble of the war and small struggling firms like toyota embraced kaizen they call it their

00:05:23.600 soul to and began building some of the highest quality products in the world and so yeah with the kaizen

00:05:28.920 went to the car manufacturing basically the the manufacturer the company gave the on-the-ground

00:05:33.960 employees the permission to stop the conveyor belt so to speak and make those changes which was often

00:05:39.960 unheard of in american factors like you never stopped the conveyor belt like you kept it going no matter

00:05:44.820 what but there they were they stop it if you can improve it let's do that right then and there

00:05:49.140 exactly it's one of the ways that kaizen works in terms of preventing mistakes because as as you say

00:05:56.220 very very well prior to deming and kaizen cars would go down the assembly line and at the end of the line

00:06:03.060 workers would look to see how many problems there were and no matter how much you paid for the car

00:06:09.340 whether it was a ford or ferrari you still came back to the dealer a week later with 10 things that

00:06:14.460 needed to be fixed well deming and his colleague at toyota named taiichi ono decided we're not going

00:06:20.540 to do that cars going down the assembly line as you pointed out and somebody sees a scratch on the

00:06:26.180 fender they stopped the assembly line bring in the supplier the engineer and tried to fix it there and

00:06:31.680 everybody thought deming was crazy how can you mass manufacture a product when you're stopping at every

00:06:37.520 few feet to fix it turned out to be the most efficient way to build cars and since then

00:06:42.340 everybody's adopted that philosophy and actually what ended up happening were these japanese manufacturers

00:06:47.540 toyota in particular like they started beating the big car american car companies ford chevy and like

00:06:53.440 gm actually sent people to toyota to figure out how can we implement this kaizen so it's kind of weird

00:06:58.880 like it started in the united states went to japan and then americans had to go back to japan to

00:07:03.760 rediscover this thing it's very true that's exactly the history of it yeah in some ways it makes sense

00:07:11.980 because after world war ii we were the only industrial giant still standing people were buying our cars and

00:07:17.080 refrigerators no matter how we built them so until the japanese started to really make inroads into our

00:07:23.140 consumer world nobody got interested in deming and kaizen what's interesting is like why i mean so

00:07:29.860 these car companies saw what deming was doing right with to with the democracy the armory of democracy

00:07:35.820 right building these things really fast and it was working why did they decide like nah we're going to go

00:07:41.200 back to the way we used to do things um before the war i think they probably assumed it was cheaper

00:07:46.700 um if you're building 7 000 cars a day it just seemed logical to keep the assembly line moving and fix the

00:07:54.020 problems later it just it just seemed logical to them and because they had no competition

00:07:58.940 and a huge consumer base of soldiers coming back from the war wanting to buy new cars it was hard for

00:08:06.840 them to try to take a harder look at what was happening even when the japanese started to make

00:08:12.000 huge inroads they assumed it was because the japanese workers were more docile that it was

00:08:17.140 an easier environment for manufacturers it took them a long time to decide all right i guess we have to

00:08:22.520 adopt this right and i think in the book you highlight there was this one particular gm factory

00:08:27.860 it was like the worst factory gm factory in america but they brought in people from toyota and they 1.00

00:08:35.160 basically they turned this thing around like what happened there it's an amazing story because i've i

00:08:39.500 have heard interviews with the workers at premont it was originally a general motors factory and

00:08:44.900 evidently uh workers thought the management was so hostile so harsh that the workers actually

00:08:51.660 admitted they were sabotaging the cars so uh general motors closed the factory down well as toyota was

00:08:59.220 starting and honda was starting to make huge inroads um general motors got desperate and they took a

00:09:05.660 their their design of the car and they took the same hostile workers back and this time they used

00:09:13.440 deming's management methods including kaizen and at the same time they were automating as many of their

00:09:19.780 factories as they could well a year later the highest quality cars in the entire general motors line

00:09:26.440 were the ones built with these workers in fremont i heard the same workers interviewed after toyota took

00:09:33.000 over and some of them believe it or not would actually go to the showroom the dealer showrooms and watch

00:09:40.620 people test drive the car they had such pride in what they were doing so it turned out it wasn't the car it

00:09:46.500 wasn't the it wasn't the labor problems it would turned out it was the manufacturing process that

00:09:50.980 gave people dignity and a sense of importance that kaizen provided because what kaizen asked each worker

00:09:56.840 to do is to go to work each day thinking what small step could i possibly take to improve the process or

00:10:04.120 product so people went to went to work with a sense of creativity and empowerment that nobody invested

00:10:10.100 them with ever ever before and then speaking of how they were you know sabotaging the cars like i think

00:10:15.380 they were leaving whiskey bottles and door frames and things like that yeah yes yeah yeah imagine how

00:10:24.700 angry these people were it's just hard to fathom knowing they were putting their jobs at risk but

00:10:29.000 they were that angry so yeah kaizen it's all about empowering people on the ground making small

00:10:33.820 incremental changes this goes against sort of the grain what we think how change is done in your

00:10:39.280 experience with working with patients working with doctors and just working with other individuals in

00:10:44.100 this sort of behavior change what are the big myths that people have about change both personally and

00:10:49.360 in an organization well the best it's a great question the best answer is go back and kind of

00:10:54.660 define the alternative to kaizen because basically what the western notion of change is what we call

00:11:01.220 innovation which we define as taking the largest possible steps to accomplish a large goal and for many

00:11:08.180 people in many organizations that's the only way they think of change we're going to bring in some

00:11:13.200 consultants and design some new pro new program it's going to cost a fortune to implement if i want to lose

00:11:19.540 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

00:11:24.900 problem and big solution it goes completely against the western mindset to think that we could get to the same

00:11:30.880 goal sometimes even faster with small steps as opposed to big huge leaps and as everyone listening

00:11:38.160 to this has discovered at some point in our lives sometimes those big steps lead to big falls and

00:11:43.960 sometimes the price of that fall is more than we ever bargained to pay so it isn't that we're making

00:11:49.800 trying to make innovation bad or wrong but the question is if it's not practical or hasn't worked are you

00:11:56.320 free to take very small steps to accomplish the same goal so the the biggest myth to go back to

00:12:02.940 your question is thinking that the first of all the only way to change is through big steps and the

00:12:08.780 second big myth is to think that basically you're trying to make it to decide or am i going to take a

00:12:13.880 particularly in the creative process am i going to take a small step or a big step because when you

00:12:20.340 look at creativity because one of our research projects we looked at breakthrough products everything from

00:12:26.140 the internet to the microwave uh to barcodes um and so many great inventions came from some incredibly

00:12:34.360 small inconsequential moment that somebody got intrigued with and out of that small curiosity

00:12:41.200 breakthrough products came whether it's disney world or disneyland the credit card i could

00:12:46.940 take you through any and all of those they were all but some incredibly ridiculously small moments

00:12:52.520 somebody thought now that's interesting yeah it's interesting like you said we we put this

00:12:57.120 premont innovation we think innovation just happens like it's like sort of like this lightning bolt from

00:13:01.400 the heavens but as you say really most innovation it's very slow and it's the result of small steps

00:13:08.280 till you got to that point yeah it's the old story we all grew up with the children's story of the

00:13:12.760 tortoise and the hare we just thought it was a children's story and not a metaphor for our lives so besides

00:13:18.460 manufacturing companies i mean how have you seen kaizen be incorporated in the lives of regular folks

00:13:25.200 for example with your work with doctors and helping the helping patients you know live healthier lives

00:13:30.340 i mean what have what have like what are some of the success stories you've seen a value to kaizen

00:13:35.300 particularly in a medical setting is that you're trying to get people to make life changes and everybody

00:13:41.580 that walks through the door of a clinic and i'm sure everybody listening to this knows that we should

00:13:46.880 exercise we should eat well we should get enough sleep we should drink more water this is not a

00:13:52.300 mystery but everybody's got very good reasons why they don't have the time the energy or it just seems

00:13:57.720 overwhelming so getting somebody that's got a job and children to raise or all kinds of

00:14:04.400 responsibilities for elderly parents any of those kinds of things will say you're crazy i don't have

00:14:10.540 if i had time to do that i would but can you get somebody to exercise one minute a day

00:14:15.920 every day um can you get somebody for example to what happens of course is if you're exercising a

00:14:22.300 minute a day after a while what tends to happen is you develop a habit and it starts to increase

00:14:28.160 i remember years ago before i ever met dr deming and discovered kaizen there was a world famous

00:14:34.060 pain expert at ucla giving a two-night course for people with cancer pain and at the end of the first

00:14:39.780 night he said to the group i want you all to go home and meditate for one minute well i thought that

00:14:45.020 was the dumbest idea i ever heard of so i waited for the audience to leave and as politely as i

00:14:49.920 could i asked the professor why one minute it's not enough to do anybody any good he very patiently

00:14:55.780 asked me how old is meditation i said thousands of years old he said that's absolutely correct

00:15:01.620 there's a very good chance everybody in this room has heard of meditation before tonight

00:15:06.200 those who like the idea have already found a book or a teacher and they're doing it

00:15:10.680 for the rest of the people in this room meditation is the worst idea they ever heard of

00:15:15.140 i'd rather they go home and meditate for one minute than not meditate for 30 they may discover they like

00:15:21.260 it they may forget to stop which is what all the current research on kaizen argues if you can get

00:15:27.080 people to put a toe in the water to start something it'll eventually become a habit we'd like people to

00:15:33.160 drink more water so getting people just to put a bottle of water at their desk another in the car

00:15:38.200 another where they shave or put on their makeup and you're developing a pattern because the good

00:15:43.200 news is the brain's a creature of habit the bad news is the brain's a creature of habit anything you do

00:15:48.880 regularly the brain starts to commit cells to simplest example i can think of is advertising

00:15:54.540 you know if you draw two golden arches and ask people what it is they'll say mcdonald's and some of

00:16:01.360 these people have never set foot in one of their restaurants but they've seen those 15 second

00:16:05.720 commercials over and over and over again and so they can tell you three or four of the products

00:16:11.440 of a restaurant they've never been into so advertisers know repetition is what the brain decides is

00:16:18.300 important so if you can get people to do something just just momentarily just for 15 seconds 30 seconds

00:16:25.720 a minute you can get people to make changes there's a wonderful kaizen technique called mind sculpture

00:16:31.780 there's a book by that name that takes people through the technical parts of it and my book

00:16:36.740 talks about the applications of it and what it is they discovered uh in some athletes who had injured

00:16:42.820 themselves and who recovered much faster than anybody dreamed they were using this technique called

00:16:48.400 mind sculpture you can use it for sports you can use it for public speaking you can use it if you're

00:16:53.480 afraid to go out on a date you can even use it to exercise and what it's based on the premise that

00:16:59.800 if you close your eyes imagine yourself for example in the gym picturing lifting reaching down to lift

00:17:06.540 the weights and again you're you're you're not moving a muscle you can feel the muscles in your

00:17:11.360 arms start to tense you can feel your breathing increase again in retrospect based on it based on a simple

00:17:17.420 principle with your eyes closed your brain is so stupid it doesn't know where it is and it's sending 0.85

00:17:23.400 perfect messages to the body so if i'm if i have if i'm afraid of public speaking and i close my eyes

00:17:29.880 picture myself in a classroom with 30 students half of them on their smartphones if they're not

00:17:36.200 25 i'm still sleeping but i imagine what i'd say voice tone gestures just 15 20 30 seconds at the

00:17:44.540 most at a time one two three times a day at most again eventually the brain decides this is important

00:17:50.920 and commits commits the body to it so it's a wonderful technique for people that would like

00:18:07.040 to make changes but have close to no motivation at all because mind sculpture takes almost no time

00:18:13.080 according to the research in this book right you're actually if you're if you're doing that with

00:18:17.940 exercise i'll actually do it on an airplane close my eyes and imagine i'm in the gym or running

00:18:22.780 and according to the data you're burning 25 of the calories you'd actually burn in real time and

00:18:29.820 the brain's practicing doing it perfectly so basically you take any any task that you're you're

00:18:35.200 feeling overwhelmed by you're putting off and just mentally rehearsing you're doing it yeah and i

00:18:41.200 guess the trick is to get as vivid as possible with it yes as much as you can again your inner

00:18:45.400 your inner visions are never as clear as the outside ones but you're picking the the book starts

00:18:51.400 off with a very famous british javelin olympic athlete who had injured his shoulders a few months

00:18:57.240 before the olympics was obviously had his arm in a tourniquet but imagined himself in the olympic

00:19:03.400 stadium reaching for the javelin and picking it up and throwing it again while he was his shoulder

00:19:08.020 and arm was immobile and went on to win a medal just because he again practiced it perfectly some some of the

00:19:14.900 olympic ski teams spend half their time practicing in a classroom going down the mountain in their mind

00:19:20.680 because again the muscles are practicing doing it right instead of practicing falling so that's that's

00:19:26.540 an easy first step just thinking about doing the thing and visualizing it not just thinking about

00:19:31.720 it yeah visualizing it is key all right so let's look at some more and more brass tack things that

00:19:35.520 people can do with kaizen and like you said a lot of this stuff it's going to seem it's going to seem

00:19:39.300 like the doc the guy who said just meditate for a minute you're like how is this going to work so like in

00:19:43.360 the book you talk about one of the first steps is to ask small questions so what do you mean by i mean

00:19:48.940 what are some examples of small questions and trying to apply kaizen to a task and that that one i stole

00:19:54.480 from the deming and toyota because when because what as toyota was rebuilding after the war deming

00:19:59.920 simply asked each of the toyota workers to ask themselves a question and the question was what small

00:20:05.700 trivial step could i take that may improve the process or product what deming suspected and we still

00:20:11.880 believe to be true though nobody knows why is the brain cannot reject the question any question you

00:20:18.140 ask repeatedly the brain's compelled to pay attention to and start its own google search it's a really

00:20:25.060 bizarre uh finding about the brain if i'm doing a five-day program say in a hotel for a group and i'll

00:20:31.640 say to them first day what color car is parked three cars to the right of yours in the parking lot

00:20:36.940 they look at me like that's the dumbest question i ever heard i mean of course it is i ask them the

00:20:42.260 same stupid question on tuesday by wednesday at the earliest breath thursday at the latest 0.55

00:20:47.280 pulling into the parking lot with far more interesting things on their mind a place in

00:20:52.600 the brain with the funny name of hippocampus will say to them that fool is going to ask me again about

00:20:57.620 the color of the car and they're forced to store an answer in short-term memory the brain cannot reject

00:21:03.040 the question the trick is that the question has to be small enough that it doesn't make the person

00:21:08.360 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

00:21:13.440 married by the end of the year how am i going to make a fortune in the next six months the bigger the

00:21:18.440 question the more it triggers fear in the brain and overwhelms the creative process if you make the

00:21:25.040 question small and trivial but ask it each day whether it's what would what what activity would make

00:21:31.220 me more joyful in life or what it what it is i could do in the next week or so that would make

00:21:37.060 me more productive just asking the question patiently once or twice a day and the brain takes

00:21:43.840 on the google search and as every one of your listeners can probably attest all of us have had

00:21:49.300 the experience where you're in the shower you're driving to work and all of a sudden you got a solution

00:21:53.380 to a problem because the brain percolated on it and eventually in its own inefficient but magnificent

00:21:59.800 way solve the problem that's great so let's give like specific examples here let's say someone is

00:22:05.660 trying to pay off their student loans right and i guess the wrong question would be how can i pay off

00:22:11.700 my student loans by the end of the year again we're not trying to make innovation bad or wrong you could

00:22:18.420 ask that question and if all of a sudden you get a great answer that's fantastic most of us get stuck

00:22:24.420 and overwhelmed by the question which is what you're suggesting so the alternative would be

00:22:28.960 what small step could i take today that could save me save me some money whether it's instead of getting

00:22:37.940 starbucks going to 7-eleven for coffee whether it's taking the bike instead of the bus any small way you

00:22:44.860 can begin to reduce your financial expenditures now you think well i got thirty thousand dollars in debt and

00:22:51.800 you want me just to save two dollars on a cup of coffee you're right it's not going to it'll take

00:22:56.640 you two generations to pay off the debt but you're training the brain to start to look for ways to save

00:23:02.980 money and so you're programming the brain for a process you wanted to engage in so that would be

00:23:08.880 one way to deal with another would another using that same example just asking the question who who can i

00:23:16.500 ask that could help me find ways to to manage this debt any more creatively uh just asking the

00:23:23.280 question once a day and eventually you may find yourself uh looking at government agencies looking

00:23:28.940 at different programs because there's a dozen different programs to help student student debt get

00:23:34.060 resolved but the idea of sitting down and spending two hours on the internet can be overwhelming to

00:23:40.440 people the idea of just asking the question and letting the brain percolate on it may be a much

00:23:45.600 easier and more acceptable strategy right so you're basically trying to kickstart your brain into

00:23:51.000 thinking small with these small questions and when those will sort of it'll snowball eventually with

00:23:56.820 the question i thought this is a great opportunity to use kaizen with other people like say you're a

00:24:01.600 manager or even a parent this would be a great opportunity like questions are a great way to help

00:24:05.820 others implement kaizen in their own life it's a good good coaching opportunity yes exactly in fact i was

00:24:11.220 i was watching an interview on a tv show with yo yo ma the most famous cellist and one of the most

00:24:17.120 famous musicians in the world and he was talking about the fact his father set very high standards

00:24:22.280 but each day very very small steps that he could accomplish so the idea of creating small victories

00:24:29.480 allows the team to develop allows confidence to develop and the other thing about small steps

00:24:35.240 particularly in the workplace is you don't know which small step is going to turn out to be huge

00:24:39.900 as i said there's so many breakthrough products from the credit cards at disneyland that turned

00:24:44.280 there was some small moment that the laser that nobody thought was going to turn out to be because

00:24:50.300 you don't know when you take a small step what's going to end up staying small and what's going to

00:24:54.160 become huge yeah i was thinking this would be like my kids like whenever they get frustrated

00:24:58.880 instead of like trying to figure it out for themselves like instead of doing it for them it's like

00:25:03.060 ask them a stupid small question and help them solve their own problem we talked about mind 0.66

00:25:08.320 sculptures that's basically thinking very small thoughts and again people might think okay how

00:25:12.320 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 1.00

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

00:41:05.360 telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - September 21, 2017

#341： The Kaizen Method — Get 1% Better Each Day

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