Personal Kaizen: 15 Tips for your continuous improvement

Garr Reynolds from Presentation Zen, whom I had the good fortune to meet in Osaka a couple of years ago is simply the best theorist and presenter on design and presentation skills globally. His blog is on our blogroll and I eagerly look forward to each piece Garr writes as I know it will come from a really thoughful cross cultural perspective. Here is the introduction to Personal Kaizen: 15 Tips for your continuous improvement

"Kaizen (改善) means "improvement" — "kai" (改) means change/make better, and "zen" (善) means good — but as the term is used as a business process it more closely resembles in English “continuous improvement.” Kaizen is one of the keys to the steady improvement and innovation found at successful companies in Japan such as Toyota. Says Matthew May, in his book The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation, “Kaizen is one of those magical concepts that is at once a philosophy, a principle, a practice, and a tool.” Though Kaizen is a tool used by corporations to achieve greater innovation, productivity, and general excellence, it’s also an approach, an approach that we can learn from and apply to our own lives as we strive for continuous improvement on a more personal level. We can call this “Personal Kaizen.” Others have applied the personal kaizen approach to personal efficiency or GTD. You too can take the spirit of kaizen and apply it to your own unique personal kaizen approach to improve — step-by-step, little-by-little — your design mindfulness, knowledge, and skill. "