One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way

CHAPTER FIVE
Solve Small Problems
We are so accustomed to living with minor annoyances that it’s not always easy to identify them, let
alone make corrections. But these annoyances have a way of acquiring mass and eventually
blocking your path to change. By training yourself to spot and solve small problems, you can avoid
undergoing much more painful remedies later.
In its years of post–World War II rebuilding, Toyota began a bold experiment. One of the company’s gifted
managers, Taiichi Ohno, changed one of the fundamental precepts of the assembly line. Before Ohno came
along, nearly all auto companies followed the same procedure—each chassis went down the assembly
line as one worker after another performed his or her function. The workers were to do the single task
assigned to them, and that was all. Any mistakes in the process were corrected by quality-control
inspectors at the end of the line.
Ohno had a different idea, one that was apparently influenced by Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s idea of
small, continual improvement. Ohno placed a cord at each step along the assembly line, and any worker
who noticed a defect could pull the cord and bring the line to a dead stop. Ohno made sure that engineers,
suppliers, and line workers were on hand to fully identify the problem and craft a solution, preferably on
the spot.
Every other manufacturer found this idea absurd, a violation of the basic tenets of mass manufacturing.
How could a company assemble products swiftly when the line could be stopped on a worker’s whim to
correct a minor defect?
Contrary to this common wisdom, Ohno’s method proved to be the most successful means of building
automobiles. Fixing a small problem on the scene prevented much bigger problems later. Sadly, though,
not every business has learned from Toyota’s experience, and the temptation remains strong to gloss over
what appear to be minor problems. The oil and gas company BP, for example, ignored 356 “small” oil
spills that occurred between 2001 and 2007. Regulators twice issued concerns, but experts from the
petroleum industry dismissed them. It wasn’t until 2010 that BP was forced to recognize the consequences
of ignoring these “small” warnings: That was the year when an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon
drilling rig caused 200 million gallons of crude oil to be pumped into the Gulf of Mexico—becoming the
worst oil spill in history.
A curious but true rock ’n’ roll legend shows the power of implementing small, kaizen measures to
achieve excellence and prevent costly mistakes: Van Halen’s contracts with concert promoters demanded
not only that a bowl of M&Ms be provided backstage prior to its performance, but also that all brown
M&Ms be removed! If any were found in the bowl, the concert would be cancelled but Van Halen would
still be paid.
At first glance, this appears to be nothing more than an example of a rock band’s narcissistic excess.
Van Halen’s tours were among the first to bring highly technical, very complex stagecraft to venues. Their
legendary lead vocalist David Lee Roth says, “We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks full of

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gear, where the standard was three trucks. And there were many, many technical errors. When I would
walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in the bowl, we’d line-check the entire production. Guaranteed
you’re going to arrive at a technical error. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem.” Yet how many times
have we, in our haste to reach a goal, spotted signs of trouble—and then recategorized them as “normal,”
just to avoid facing them?
When we are trying to make a change, it can be tempting to ignore the subtle warning signs, ones that
say: 
Something’s wrong here. You need to slow down, retrace your steps, and investigate.
But if we
continue to avoid these small problems, they will grow and grow until we create a mess so spectacular
that we are required to stop the assembly line of change, announce a recall, and proceed with the painful
and time-consuming process of undoing the now-big mistake. Focusing on the small mistakes now can
save us years of costly corrections.