The Kaizen approach (Japanese for “improvement” or “change for the better”) is a philosophy for daily, incremental, improvement. The Kaizen approach was first brought into Japanese businesses after the second world war by the Americans.  The idea is to improve process and quality management by eliminating waste, thus improving time management. In Japanese companies that use the Kaizen principles, it is the...

We have all had times when anger was our response to a given situation, we were unable to keep control.   If you review the event you can usually pick out the trigger that made you lose control.  Often this will be an interruption of some sort, or perhaps a courtesy is not acknowledged.  Imagine: Your on a car journey and while discussing the route, with your wife, the kids in the back keep asking the old favourite “are we nearly...

Image via Wikipedia Are you playing The Blame Game? It’s a really simple game to play.  You don’t need any other players and you can win every time.  All you have to do is come up with an excuse why you are not succeeding; its because of the economy, your co-workers, the competition, your partner, etc.  If you can come up with enough excuses so that you don’t take any action at all, you’re a champion in the...

Image via Wikipedia Be it in business, on the playing field or in social situations we all place a meaning to failure and it can be enough to stop us from trying something new.  Fear of failure can paralyse us into doing nothing. In reality every failure is an opportunity for learning.  If you think clearly about any situation in which failure has been the outcome it is possible to look back at that situation and see what was...

One way of staying positive, with laser focus, no matter what you are doing, is to get some quick wins under your belt first.  This doesn’t mean taking your eyes off your main goals, its about realising that the path to get there involves taking many small steps. Think about if you needed to remove the gear box from a car, for example.  Your goal might involve seeing the gearbox sat on the bench in the side of the garage all work...

I was recently listening to a training audio CD on Multi-level Marketing, which had been recommended to me, and the person giving the training made a point that I thought was worth us all considering.  He was ex-forces and had been a member of the Elite forces in the US Navy. In the training he was talking about taking responsibility for what you teach people and the consequences that are associated with that.  He used an analogy which as...