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June 2, 2008
Kaizen Anyone?
By Bob Connor, The Teagle Foundation
The versatile Cheryl Ching, of our New York staff, called my attention to a recent New Yorker article "The Open Secret of Success" by James Surowiecki. Mr. Surowiecki points to the importance of the process of continuous improvement which has allowed Toyota to become such a force in the global market place, and pocket many a yen while doing so. How have they done it? Mr. Surowiecki says,
The answer has a lot to do with another distinctive element of Toyota’s approach: defining innovation as an incremental process, in which the goal is not to make huge, sudden leaps but, rather, to make things better on a daily basis. (The principle is often known by its Japanese name, kaizen—continuous improvement.) Instead of trying to throw long touchdown passes, as it were, Toyota moves down the field by means of short and steady gains. And so it rejects the idea that innovation is the province of an elect few; instead, it’s taken to be an everyday task for which everyone is responsible.
This is precisely what accreditors are calling for these days when they visit American campuses. If one can get over the cultural divide, not so much the one between the US and Japan as the one between our traditional ideas of academia vs. the real world, the idea can be a liberating one for colleges and universities. We don't have to wait for the perfect curriculum reform, or a generation of genius teachers, or the hundred million dollar bequest. We can make improvements, NOW. Small ones add up.
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