The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT (KAIZEN)
The next section cites the need for continuous improvement (kaizen), 
whether personal or organizational, and Ford (1922, pp. 34–25) expands on 
it as follows:
* * *
The man receives his last advancement—and usually it is his last—with the 
feeling that at length he has arrived. … Any man who thinks he is a success, 
has come to his terminal. He is about ready to get off.
* * *
Personal continuous improvement is a deeply ingrained ideal in 
Japanese society. Organizational stewardship is meanwhile a key element 
of Bushido, the warrior code that Japan’s ruling class once followed and 
that guides its managers and executives today. Ford’s principles, therefore, 
aligned very closely with Japanese culture, and this made it easy for Japan 
to adopt Ford’s methods on an industrial scale. Peters (1987, p. 282) elabo-
rates that the Japanese view life itself as “a battle to achieve continuous 
improvement.”
* * *
And also I noticed a tendency among many men in business to feel that their 
lot was hard—they worked against a day when they might retire and live on 
an income—get out of the strife. Life to them was a battle to be ended as soon 
as possible. That was another point I could not understand, for as I reasoned, 
life is not a battle except with our own tendency to sag with the downpull of 
“getting settled.” If to petrify is success, all one has to do is to humour the 
lazy side of the mind, but if to grow is success, then one must wake up anew 
every morning and keep awake all day. I saw great businesses become but the 

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What I Learned about Business  •  23
ghost of a name because someone thought they could be managed just as they 
were always managed, and though the management may have been most 
excellent in its day, its excellence consisted in its alertness to its day, and not 
in slavish following of its yesterdays. Life, as I see it, is not a location, but a 
journey. Even the man who most feels himself “settled” is not settled—he is 
probably sagging back. Everything is in flux, and was meant to be. Life flows. 
We may live at the same number of the street, but it is never the same man 
who lives there.