Hey everybody, Jody here with the 55th episode of Coffee with Jody. Today I’m going to be talking with you about LEAN again and the impact of small incremental improvements and of dis- or un- improvements???? I’m not sure what the word would be actually. Stay tuned, because this is a very interesting conversation on the concept of KAIZEN and LEAN principles.
I was watching a video recently that talked about incremental, small improvements and the difference they can make. Because many times and I’ve certainly done this myself, you set a goal it’s way, way, way out there, and maybe even getting to 50% is a great thing! But I only got there 50% plus the feeling that goes with I didn’t reach it 100%. And by the way if we’re reaching our goals 100% of the time we’re probably not stretching ourselves enough.
So this concept of Two Second LEAN, which we’ve been talking with you about from Paul Akers has been amazing for us throughout this entire pandemic and is a practice that we’ve been implementing and are going to continue to do, those small, tiny, incremental improvements.
So listen to this statistic, actually, it’s not even a statistic, it’s a mathematical formula. When you make small, tiny improvements, like say 1% a day, just a tiny little improvement, if you take that 1.01 and put it to the 365th power (365 days), you end up with a 38 X’s improvement after a year. WOW!
Now, conversely, if you are getting a little worse by 1% a day, and inevitably we as human beings will do that because in nature, the force of entropy has us going from order to chaos.
So it’s very easy to slip backwards by 1%, if we’re not consciously and proactively making improvements in our environment, within ourselves and our processes and so on. When you take that 0.99 and put it to the 365th power, you come up with 97% worse! 97% worse than you were a year ago. I was like “that’s astounding.”
It was so astounding to me that I had to do the math myself. And I invite you to do as well. So, the bottom line is small, tiny incremental improvements have a huge momentum curve and you can be 38 X’s improved, better, LEAN, and running a great business in a year by making a small 1% improvement every day.
If you enjoyed this video, go ahead and like it, share it, subscribe and let me know some of those 1% that you’re interested in making over the next year.
Thank you, bye for now and see you next time.
About the author, Doug Barra
With 14 years of experience in working with small and medium sized businesses to help them grow, Doug is committed to seeing business owners thrive. Business coaching is what drives Doug.