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“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve
conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not
tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick
improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens—
and when it happens, it lasts.”
—John Wooden, one of the most successful coaches in the history of college basketball
This philosophy of small steps toward improvement was introduced to Japan after the war, when
General Douglas MacArthur’s occupation forces began to rebuild that devastated country. If you are
familiar with Japan’s corporate dominance in the late twentieth century, you may be surprised to hear that
many of its postwar businesses were run poorly, with slack management practices and low employee
morale. General MacArthur saw the need to improve Japanese efficiency and raise business standards. A
thriving Japanese economy was in MacArthur’s best interest, because a strong society could provide a
bulwark against a possible threat from North Korea and keep his troops in steady supplies. He brought in
the U.S. government’s TWI specialists, including those who emphasized the importance of small, daily
steps toward change. And at the same time that MacArthur was holding forth on small steps, the U.S. Air
Force developed a class in management and supervision for the Japanese businesses near one of its local
bases. The class was called the Management Training Program (MTP), and its tenets were almost
identical to those developed by Dr. Deming and his colleagues at the beginning of the war. Thousands of
Japanese business managers were enrolled.
The Japanese were unusually receptive to this idea. Their industrial base destroyed, they lacked the
resources for sweeping reorganization. And it wasn’t lost on Japanese business leaders that their country
had been defeated in part by America’s superior equipment and technology—so they listened closely to
the Americans’ lessons on manufacturing. Viewing employees as a resource for creativity and
improvement and learning to be receptive to subordinates’ ideas was an unfamiliar notion (as it had been
for Americans), but the graduates of these programs gave it a try. These entrepreneurs and managers and
executives went on to work in civilian industries, where they excitedly spread the gospel of small steps.
In the U.S., Dr. Deming’s series of strategies for enhancing the manufacturing process were largely
ignored once the troops were home and production was back to normal. In Japan, however, his concepts
were already part of the emerging Japanese business culture. In the late 1950s, the Japanese Union of
Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) invited Dr. Deming, the wartime proponent of quality control, to consult
further on their country’s economic efficiency and output. As you probably know, Japanese businesses—
which rebuilt themselves on the bedrock of small steps—soon rocketed to unheard-of levels of
productivity. Small steps were so successful that the Japanese gave them a name of their own: kaizen.
In the 1980s, kaizen began to cross back over to the U.S., mainly in highly technical business
applications. I first encountered the industrial exercise of kaizen as a corporate consultant; as a student of
success, I became intrigued with this philosophy and began to study it more deeply. For decades now, I’ve
explored the application of kaizen’s small steps to
personal
success. In my clinical work with individual
clients and as a faculty member of the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine, I’ve
had plenty of opportunity to witness people who need to change their lives—to kick a bad habit, ease
their loneliness, or break out of an unsatisfying career. When I assist corporations, helping business
executives grapple with tough situations is practically my job description. Over and over, I’ve seen
people bravely attempt to implement revolutionary schemes for improvement. Some succeeded, but most
did not. Often, these frustrated souls gave up, accepting life’s consolation prizes rather than pursuing their
real ambitions. Having encountered the industrial exercise of kaizen in my corporate work, I began to
wonder whether kaizen had a place inside the psychologist’s office, as a strategy not just for simple
profit, but for the expansion of behavioral, cognitive, and even spiritual potential of people like Julie.
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