Observed

While W. Edwards Deming first introduced kaizen to post-WW2 Japanese industry, it's a management concept that's applicable far more broadly. That includes just about any service sector...such as freelance business writing.

The journalist Grady Clay used to be a neighbor many, many years ago.  I once asked him about becoming a writer.  What I remember Grady saying was, “Find something you like and write about it.”

I did.  And then, I found another thing and another and so on.

I discovered something in that process.  I discovered that there are some subjects about which I write that offer more value to my readers (and clients) than others. (more…)

Here’s an excerpt from a blog I recently started following.  It’s a post about Apple’s head industrial designer, Jonathan Ive, and the process he used for the iPhone 4:

“It’s very hard to learn about materials academically, by reading about them or watching videos about them; the only way you truly understand a material is by making things with it,” Ive explains, going on to add that years upon years of making his own models with his own hands is what gave him a deep understanding of the materials he’s worked. “And it’s important to develop that appetite to want to make something, to be inquisitive about the material world, to want to truly understand a material on that level.”

I couldn’t help but think of the Roycrofters.  These American arts-and-crafters espoused the same kind of creative process over a century ago.  The furniture, books and other everyday objects they designed, built and fabricated expressed the exact nature of the materials used.

Ive, Apple and the Roycrofters understood.  They found the true nature of the materials in their products.  They knew that for the user to be the most pleased required total honesty and that this required gemba.