Continuous Improvement: The Example of Toyota

 

“Improve quality, you automatically improve productivity.”

W. Edwards Deming

 

 Some of us often think that success stories we about people and companies around the world are meant only for a set people with superior brainpower. And that we—on the other hand— cannot match their level of success and achievements.

For example, in my continent of Africa, we tend to think that the white people are greater because of their genes and that’s why they can make planes, cars, ships, smartphones, televisions and we cannot.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

There are great people in every continent and countries and frankly, there are also ‘never-do-well’ in every country on earth. Elon Musk, the iron-man who founded two revolutionary companies like Tesla and SpaceX is of African origin (South Africa).

So I am writing this article to prove that with enough persistence to acquire and practice the right set of skills and habits, anyone from anywhere can attain a legendary level of accomplishment.

With the experience of Toyota, we can learn what it takes to transform our continent, our company and our lives from the class mediocrity to the class of remark-ability.

Now, let’s dive into how the Japanese institution redefined its destiny.

Before Toyota became the high-quality super producer of automobiles that it is today, it was—for quite a while— a struggling company that tried to sell underpowered, overpriced cars in foreign markets without success.

After repeated failures, the Japanese company had to decide to suspend its operations outside Japan. 

In search of answers, Toyota hired an American management consultant W. Edwards Deming who taught Toyota how to improve quality, reduce costs and increase productivity. He helped them create a system of efficiency by identifying, and correcting defects found in their operations on an ongoing basis.

As a result, Toyota has become a learning organization that is totally committed to the art of relentless pursuit of perfection. And with this commitment, Toyota replaces sub-optimal performance with world-class quality. 

William Edwards Deming, the father of total quality management explains this concept in his book, ‘Out of the Crisis’ as follows:

“A person and an organization must have goals, take actions to achieve those goals, gather evidence of achievement, study and reflect on the data and from that take actions again. Thus, they are in a continuous feedback spiral toward continuous improvement.”

From the foregoing, it’s clear that great individuals and companies become so, not because of gene or luck but because of their determination to learn what they need to know and put their acquired knowledge into relentless practice.

And like them, if we are willing to iterate and improve our approach, we can surprisingly turn around the image of our entire African continent.

In the words of the British business magnate, Richard Branson: “Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change.”

Finally, if you want to maximize your potential as an individual or as an organization, learn from Toyota and commit to the art of continuous improvement from here onward.

The Making of a Meaningful Life

“Let's start a new tomorrow, today.”_Neil Gaiman

 

 A remarkably awesome life is not something that happens by chance; it is a product of life-long series of masterpiece days purposefully lived.

Today, I want to deconstruct how we can create meaningful life out of our brief existence on earth by living with purpose, by acting on priority and by living for productivity, every single day.

You see, if we want to live an awesome life, we can’t let circumstances control our direction; so, we must be willing to set the right priorities and live each day in the best way possible.

Mind you, this does not mean flawless perfection in any way but it does mean understanding that we can take charge of our life by making each day better than the day before. We can always improve our chances of a better tomorrow by maximizing the opportunities of today.

To do this, we need to have clearly defined set of goals. A well-thought out plan is essential to having a meaningful self-direction.

In the words of a Zen teacher, Dainin Katagiri: “If you want to take care of tomorrow, take better care of today. We always live now. All we have to do is entrust ourselves to the life we now live.”

Embrace self-discipline. Give every single day your best effort. Focus on the here and now without allowing yourself to become discouraged by your less optimal days.

What we do now, what we make of our present circumstances, will determine the quality and scope of our future possibilities. Doing our best today will put us in a better position tomorrow.

If you want to have an awesome life, you need to plan and live each day as if it matters—because it does.

How to Triumph Over Any Difficulty

 

“One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.”_ Albert Schweitzer

 

I once read a powerful quote from Confucius, the Chinese philosopher which posited that our greatest glory is not in not having any difficulty to deal with but in overcoming each and every challenge we encounter.

Indeed, the real measure of our strength has less to do with our shinning successes but more to do with the difficulties we have overcome to win them.

In this direction, I want share a trick of survival that we can use to persevere and win out of every undesirable circumstance we may face at any point in our lives.

This useful trick is about taking hard things bit by bit, one step at time, one day at a time, in order to go ahead one more time.

Since hard conditions of life are indispensable to bringing our best, then our best hope of triumphant lies in learning how to overcome the inevitable hardships of life. And such skill is what we want to unlock in today’s article.

So, in the face of a huge difficulty, don’t think about how hard the challenge may turn out to be for you throughout the year, just focus on the present moment and bear with what you have to do right now. In other words, don’t let what is yet to come aggravate what is currently at hand.

Know that victory doesn’t always go to the strongest or the smartest, but it always goes to the one who never quits. The one who in the face of a terrifying difficulty, chooses to ignore the end and does his best on his most immediate duty.

When you’re feeling outmatched and in doubt as to whether you can go on further. Take a deep breath and compress your ‘mountain’ into something you can act upon, here and now.  

In an interesting book, ‘The Way of the SEAL,’ the author, Mark Divine explains the concept as simplifying the battlefield of life in order to have a laser focus on whatever is most important in the moment.

By doing this, we not only gain an empowering perspective on a very big problem, but we also find a reserved energy to handle the moment with nerve and class.

You see, quitters in the game of life are not necessarily the weakest, but too often, they are the ones who got disempowered by their own poor perspective. They are the ones who got crushed by the magnified weight of their challenges.

We can overcome the most devastating difficulties if we would live by the Chinese proverb that states, “to get through the hardest journey, we need take only one step at a time, but we must keep on stepping.” Therefore, be grateful for your hardships because they are a veritable engine of self-improvement and eventual success.

Finally, in your own heroic journey, never pass over a great opportunity because of its associated challenges or difficulties, and always remember that ease is a greater threat to your progress than growth-related hardships.

 

The Basics: Taking Them Seriously

 

“Most of us forget the basics and wonder why the specifics don't work.”_Garrison Wynn

 

The foundational power in anything is found within its fundamentals and nowhere else, as one winner rightly explained: “Everything in life goes back to the basics.”

In other words, nothing matters more than the basics.

Whether the times are great or awful, if we want to take our game to the next level, the best place to look is not a place of complexity but a simple angle of functionality—an area of the basics.

Simple truths are powerful, if we accept them, understand them and then act upon them with vigour and determination as a billionaire investor, Charlie Munger did advise: ‘take a simple idea and take it seriously.”

Get this: simple truths or basic ideas—as essential as they stand— are only a single part of the theme of today’s article. The second and more important part is taking them very seriously.

However, because they can appear quite simplistic, most people rarely take them seriously. But highly effective people think differently about any simple truth. They take simple truths very seriously. And it is this raving fact that separates them from everyone else.

In this direction, I want you to realize that:

It is easy to pay lip service to simple truths.

It is easy to handle simple truths with levity.

And it is very easy not to stick with simple truths for the long haul.

 

Therefore, if you want to maximize your potential, you must discipline yourself to follow the road less travelled by taking fundamental truths of life, and the simple truths of your profession very seriously.

You see, when I study the work of great masters, whether in arts, sports or science, what I notice is that the most unique thing about them is not in terms of grand acts of sophistication but in the way they commit to fundamental truths of their crafts. They are extremely focused on the core details of their games.

They are extra-ordinary not because they have a gene different from everyone else but because of what they pay attention to: they pay rapt attention to what most of us tend to underrate—the basics.

Winners are uncommon in their mode of executing the basics of their arts. As the saying goes: success comes not from doing extra-ordinary things, but it comes from doing ordinary things in extra-ordinary ways.

With aforementioned, I think it is clear that the only way to remain on top of our game is to never neglect the roots for any reason as a legendary coach, John Wooden did observe:

‘Champions are brilliant at the basics.’ And he continues with the following words:

“There are no shortcuts. If you're working on finding a short cut, the easy way, you're not working hard enough on the fundamentals. You may get away with it for a spell, but (in the long run) there is no substitute for the basics. And the first basic is good, old fashioned hard work.”

If we want to make the most of our potential or overcome any challenge, then we need to flee from complexity and return to simple truths, timeless values and evergreen basics of self-discipline and responsibility.  

Finally, understand that the foundation of a sustained growth in life never resides in complexities; it always resides in the simplicity of putting the basics ahead of everything else.

One Hour a Day

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”_Albert Einstein

 

Whatever the change we may yearn to see in our lives, whether it pertains to career, relationship, or business, we need to know that the first place to start is not outside but within.

Self-improvement begins with what we think.

And a proven path to influence our own thinking for the better is a path of knowledge. What we study has a far-reaching impact on what we think, believe and do. The philosophy that governs our life is a direct function of our mental diet.

You see, remarkable success stories we hear about, don’t just happen; they are made happen by remarkable human beings, people who have embodied the change they wish to see in the world.

Now, if you would like to join their rank, I encourage you to consider an idea of studying something meaningful to you for just one hour a day.

Yes, you can make incredible progress by just learning something useful, every single day.

Mind you, the idea is not actually mine. I learned it from Earl Nightingale, the author of the powerful book, 'The Strangest Secret.’

With that idea, Earl became a master at what he does and so do many others that have faithfully implemented it.

So I dare you to ask yourself the following question:

“What if by devoting just one focused hour a day, I could educate and strengthen my mind to new level of performance?”

World class doers are neither angels nor superhuman. However, they all have strategies that enable them to stay at their best every time. This simple but deceptively powerful idea is one of those strategies.

It simply states that by allocating a regular time in our days to focus on intellectual growth, we can literally make any changes happen in our life.

In the words of Earl Nightingale, “Knowledge is power — and you can acquire a remarkable amount of knowledge in just one hour a day.”

We know that every skill is learnable. One just needs to be serious about studying what is necessary and then go ahead to put that knowledge into  practice.

I would like to conclude this article with a classic example of this idea in life. Charlie Munger, a billionaire and partner of Warren Buffet reveals in the book, University of Berkshire Hathaway as written by Daniel Pecaut  and Corey Wrenn.

They write that, “he (Charlie) decided he would sell himself the best hour of the day to improving his own mind, and the world could buy the rest of his time.”

And after the proof of its effectiveness in his life, he now offers the following counsel to me and you. He concluded that:

“If you become very reliable and stay that way, it will be very hard to fail in doing anything you want.”

What a great promise for a price of learning only an hour out of twenty-four hours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slight-Edge Advantage

 

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.”_Robert Collier

 

In any great game of life, consistency of performance is the non-negotiable requirement of mastery.

Whether the game is sports, business or academics, if we work only by sporadic intensity of performance based on swings in our feelings, motivation and emotions we will fall short true greatness.

However, if we adopt the strategy of unremitting consistency or what I call, ‘the slight edge advantage,’ we will inevitably attain a lofty end.

I coined the idea from a wonderful book that is entitled ‘Slight Edge’ written by Jeff Olsen. The book states that consistency of performance is like an anchor that anyone can hang their best intentions upon. This anchor is a sure means to transform our dreams into reality.

In the book, Jeff Olsen gives us seven strategies that lead to true success: two of which are: ‘consistent and being committed for the long haul.’

In this article, I interpret both principles to be one and the same because to be committed is to stay consistent at a time when it would have been easier not to.

Contrary to the popular idea of instant breakthrough, the author of ‘Slight Edge’ tells us that people with mindset of consistency is are the leading masters in all arenas of life. Indeed, quick fixes have nothing to do with lasting success.

He observes: “Any time you see what looks like a breakthrough, it is always the end result of a long series of little things, done consistently over time.”

You see, no matter how talented we are, without the application of consistency we wouldn’t move beyond the edge of mediocrity. But with unremitting consistency, we can achieve something truly remarkable.

In the words of a football coach, Jim Tressel: “The hallmark of excellence, the test of greatness, is—the spirit of— consistency.

 

Positive Humility

“Humility leads to strength and not to weakness. It is the highest form of self-respect to admit mistakes and to make amends for them.”_John J. McCloy

 

We can find countless number of self-improvement materials teaching about principles of true success but we don’t have a lot that accurately emphasize the importance of humility on human achievements.

So, to make a contribution, I decided to compose this article. Now let’s start with a dictionary definition of the word.

Dictionary defines humility as the quality of being modest or respectful.  It is the perfect quietness of one’s heart.

When we think of a truly humble person, we are likely to have a mind-picture of modesty, calmness, fairness, tranquility and authenticity.

Humility is about thinking unassumingly of oneself, especially in relation to others. It is about not having an exaggerated sense of self-importance.

However, true humility is not servile but it is quiet confidence, and genuine consideration for the feelings and opinions of others.

Therefore, the right approach to humbleness is a realistic appraisal of one's own abilities, coupled with a sincere desire to use those abilities to cater for the need of others. This is what I mean by positive humility.

According to Jim Collin’s book, ‘Good to Great,’ one of the two powerful qualities of exceptional leaders is humility—the other one is mettle.

You see, positive humility has nothing to do with being a doormat, but everything to do with being a wise person.  In this sense, we cannot overestimate the value of true humility and its power both in social and business circle.

This means that for humility to be positive, courage should not be absent. Humility without nerve is what degenerates into being a pushover.

Stephen Covey agrees with Jim Collins completely when he concluded in his book, ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,’ that the twin virtues of true success are humility and courage.

He said that humility is like the mother while courage is like the father. And the two combined in one person is the ultimate source of personal power.

Therefore you need the virtue of courage to ensure your sense of humility remains positive and beneficial to you and everyone around you.

Finally, if you want to imbibe the virtue of positive humility, keep in mind the beautiful words of a writer, Ralph Marston who wrote:

“Whatever you’re doing a sense of superiority will make you worse at it. Humility, on the other hand will make you better. The moment you think you’ve got it all figured out, your progress stops.

Instead, continue to advance and improve by reminding yourself how much more there will always be to discover.

Confidence is positive and empowering, but arrogance is deadly. Be confidence, but not at the expense of your respect for others.”