Small, simple steps
View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) I’m fascinated by the the Japanese concept of kaizen.
It’s commonplace to apply this word to business and productivity and in that context it translates as “continuous improvement.”
But Japanese is a subtle language. Fundamentally kaizen is not a principle or a demand. It’s more of an observation.
The dictionary defines it as “change for better:” implying a statement of fact that is built from both circumstance and choice. I like that idea.
Think about how kaizen can apply to your life and your work: it challenges your assumptions. That’s what happened to me, |NAME|.
For years, I operated on the assumption that being successful at what I did was measured by how much I produced: higher volume meant improvement, improvement meant growth, and growth meant success.
That kind of thinking made perfect sense in an Industrial Revolution era where the goal was to build more things better and faster than before.
That’s not the world most of us live in anymore. Going forward, anything that’s not creative can be commoditized (http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=89226eb68936fc712577977b8&id=e2405f6262 ) .
You have to protect the intrinsic value of what it means to create things out of ideas.
Creativity doesn’t come from factories; reproductions (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2007/12/workshop-of-the-world-fine-arts-division/7859/) do.
For me, change for better has meant making deliberate choices about how I work, a shift from output measured in volume to one measured by quality of advice.
This means I spend a lot of time—more than I used to—researching the business problems that I have been hired to solve. It means that I look constantly at my process—the method by which I connect things from various materials. I’m choosy about the materials themselves—books, podcasts, TED talks, music and so on. And I consider the ideas that I uncover with greater care: asking questions with a beginner’s mind and challenging my assumptions.
All of this invites change of better. All of this makes better advice.
Small, simple steps that each can be done better than before: these are essential in the business of being creative.
Very best, Patrick http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=|URL:MC_SUBJECT|: |URL:ARCHIVE_LINK_SHORT| Tweet (http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=|URL:MC_SUBJECT|: |URL:ARCHIVE_LINK_SHORT|) http://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=|URL:ARCHIVE_LINK_SHORT| Share (http://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=|URL:ARCHIVE_LINK_SHORT|)
============================================================ |IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE| |LIST:DESCRIPTION|
unsubscribe from this list (|UNSUB|) update subscription preferences (|UPDATE_PROFILE|)
|IF:REWARDS| |REWARDS_TEXT| |END:IF|