One percent improvement by everyone, every day

We live in two different worlds: One is where few people live trying to see the invisible and make sense of it. The other is where we see many visible things and yet we ignore them because they are too trivial. Thus, we apply different standards to these two worlds. One thing is clear however, we don’t talk about invisible things.

Why bother? They can’t be seen, much more appreciated, except by a few academics, consultants and management practitioners who are looking for true wisdom. Conversely, many people see things as they are and yet ignore them. Once people ignore them, mistakes can happen everywhere, including in the workplace.

One example of a management policy that is often ignored in the workplace is the clean-as-you-go (CLAYGO) policy, being part of an overall 5S good housekeeping system.

In many organizations, CLAYGO is usually applied in cafeterias, training rooms and office toilets. You can see it happening when canteen table tops and toilet mirrors are peppered with signages pleading for everyone’s cooperation. CLAYGO has become a standard for cleanliness, orderliness and discipline that inexpensive but beautifully designed mini posters are on sale on the internet.

The challenge is how to secure 100 percent cooperation from employees, even guests or outsiders. Should management impose a fine on employee violators? Per my experience, it would not work that way. Penalizing errant workers could have long-term negative effects, especially when they believe CLAYGO should be done by busboys and janitors.

However, that issue could be shot down by management telling people that hiring busboys and janitors can increase the cost, including the price of their meals in the cafeteria.

If you agree with CLAYGO as an imperative policy, try this quiz for your appreciation. See the illustration on the left. How can you secure the utmost cooperation of the employees without threatening them with penalties? What would be your low-cost improvement so that it becomes instantly acceptable to management?

The context of this quiz is based on the understanding that managers would accept excellent ideas from their employees if they did not require the organization to spend big money for its implementation. Japanese managers know that it is the basic requirement for kaizen (continuous improvement toward quality and productivity).

Army of problem-solvers

I have tried this quiz many times with some friends on social media and more than 4,000 participants in my Kaizen Blitz workshops since 2012. Ninety-nine percent failed to give the correct answer. Some of them even ignored answering the quiz for fear of showing their ignorance.

Give it a try before knowing the answer in the following statement:

Simply transfer the trash can to the other corner of the training room, near the door.

This simple solution makes it easy and faster for responsible training participants to dispose of their trash.

The principle is similar to the CLAYGO policy of cafeteria management providing meal trays to diners. This quiz illustrates the fact that we don’t see small things as important as big things which brings us to the point that there’s real value when management allows their employees to think of any marginal gain or as little as one percent improvement every single day.

If your organization can do this, you will improve corporate performance in due time. Imagine, say 1,000 workers giving their one percent ideas every day. The challenge, of course, is how to motivate people to contribute one percent improvement every day. But that’s another story which we can cover in my future articles.

For now, let me convince you with the help of American business strategist Gary Hamel who said one time: “You’ve to rely on your corporate sperm count. To think of one great idea, you need your employees to think up thousands, if not millions of ideas.” This means empowering people to discover problems and solutions.

Allow them to generate as many solutions as possible. If the workers are given the chance to help management in problem-solving and decision-making, the results can be overwhelming more than you can imagine. Outside of Toyota, another good example of an organization thinking of thousands of trivial ideas is BMW.

Through its Virtual Innovation Agency, an online platform where BMW canvassed employee suggestions from around the world and received 4,000 ideas in the first week of program implementation. This pales in comparison to what was documented by journalist Yuzo Yasuda about Toyota’s Creative Idea Suggestion System which started in 1951.

In his 1992 book “40 Years, 20 Million Ideas: The Toyota Suggestion System,” Yasuda claimed that by 1988, “the cumulative number of suggestions it had elicited reached 20 million. In recent years the number of suggestions averaged two million per year, with over 40 suggestions per year per employee, 95 percent employee participation and a 96 percent adoption rate.”

The lesson is clear. Maximizing employee contributions goes far and beyond the territorial walls of the organization. That means requiring contractual workers, security guards and janitors, including suppliers and subcontractors to participate in the program. Indeed, the best way to get good ideas is to get a lot of ideas.

Rey Elbo is a quality and productivity improvement enthusiast promoting the principle of Thinking People Strategy in organizations. Contact him on Facebook, LinkedIn, X or email [email protected] or via https://reyelbo.com