One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way

What makes people look up
on a subway car?
His answer was: the loudspeaker. Every time a train came into the station, one of
Ansboro’s sergeants handed a card to the conductor to read over the public announcement system: “Your
attention please. The Transit Police are conducting a sweep of the train. There may be a momentary delay
while they go through the train to correct all conditions. Thank you for your patience.” The officers
greeted the passengers, escorted the rowdy and the drunken off the cars, and settled down any kids who
were misbehaving. Small problems, small questions, small actions—and to the city’s collective
astonishment, the rate of major crime in the subway system dropped by 50 percent in just twenty-seven
months. Bratton was promoted to Chief of Police for the City of New York, and in that position he
produced the same extraordinary results aboveground.
(I will also note that kaizen was not the only strategy at Bratton’s command. He proved himself capable
of radical change as well, dismissing more than 75 percent of the city’s precinct commanders and
beginning a sophisticated computer operation to target high-crime areas. The small steps of kaizen and the
giant leaps of innovation are not mutually exclusive; used together, they become a formidable weapon
against even the most profound, complex, and apparently unsolvable problems. When people are up
against a thorny problem they’ve been unable to resolve, I generally advise them to focus on kaizen first.
Once they understand small steps, they find that they’ve developed an intuitive sense for when innovation
is appropriate and how to mix the two.)
When we face personal crises, the kaizen strategy of solving small problems offers consolation and
practical assistance. If we are involved in a lawsuit, or fall ill, or find that the economic tides are leaving
our business high and dry, or our partner is falling out of love with us, we cannot fix our circumstances
with one quick, decisive moment of innovation. During these crises, the only concrete steps available are
small ones. When our lives are in great distress, even while we are feeling out of control or in emotional
pain, we can try to locate the smaller problems within the larger disaster, and perhaps apply any or all of
the kaizen techniques to move us slowly in the direction of a solution. But if we are blind to the small,
manageable problems, we are more likely to slip into despair.
I encountered this despair face-to-face when I met Becky, a fifty-five-year-old woman who’d been
planning an early retirement from her corporate job. She’d hoped to fulfill a lifelong dream to become an
artist. As I came to know Becky, she showed me her paintings and sculptures. She was indeed gifted.

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But when Becky had recently gone in for a routine physical, her doctor discovered a lump in her throat.
The diagnosis: Becky had cancer. She was frightened and angry. By the time she was referred to me, she
had cut off all communication with family and friends and was completely overwhelmed by the demands
of the doctors, the disease, and the routines of her daily life. The oncologist had laid out her treatment
options, but making an informed choice seemed like just another burden. Becky was reluctant to see me,
saying: “I just can’t deal with any more doctors’ appointments.” She grudgingly agreed to let me help—
but only if it would take just a few minutes a day.
I asked Becky to tell me her goal for this period of her life. We agreed that her primary goal was to be
rid of the cancer, but since neither of us felt we could control the disease process, I asked her to list two
more. She said, “I want to make the best of each day that I have, and I want to get more chores done.” By
“chores,” she specified doing all the paperwork for her HMO, keeping up with her office job, and
maintaining her house as best she could. Here was a series of challenges that were small relative to the
cancer, but they made a tough time even worse.
I knew that Becky needed help with her chores. She had too much on her plate for even a healthy person
to handle. Becky was excellent at giving help to others but fearful of receiving it, and the more she needed
help, the harder it was to ask for. So we took some small steps toward helping Becky welcome friends
back into her life. Each morning, Becky wrote a list of chores. She put a star next to each chore with
which she’d like to have assistance and described the specific help she’d like.
This daily listing of the chores kept Becky from sinking into denial and confusion, and the wishful
thinking about the ideal assistance kept her focused on asking for help in a safe manner. In our following
sessions, I did not encourage or suggest that she actually ask friends to help her, but I did compliment her
as the list got more and more creative. The list at first was brief, with items such as “I wish a friend
would just say, ‘You are so brave’” or “I wish a friend would do my laundry.” Within a week, the list
became more detailed and emotional. “I wish a friend would sit with me while I deal on the phone with
the HMO or fill out their paperwork,” she wrote. “I wish a friend would go to the Wellness Community [a
local support group for people coping with cancer] and find out what it is like. I wish a friend would hold
me when I am crying.”
On her own, Becky slowly began to reconnect with her parents and her closest friends, and the seeds of
the wish list bore fruit. Even when her treatments sapped her energy, she grew calmer and more in control
of her day-to-day life. I saw Becky a few months ago, when the treatments were long over and the cancer
had been in remission for several years. We talked about her health for a while, and then she stopped me.
“Thanks for the gift of kaizen,” she whispered.

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