FLM

Kaizen versus Good Enough

Hans de Zwart and I write a monthly series titled: Parallax. We both agree on a title for the post and on some other arbitrary restrictions to induce our creative process. For this post we agreed to write about how Kaizen (the philosophy of continuous improvement) relates to the rise of the Good Enough paradigm. The post also has to include a non-digital example of Kaizen versus Good Enough. You can read Hans’ post with the same title here.

Recently, Wired magazine wrote about the Good Enough Revolution (GE-Rev). In short it comes down to that where in the past people wanted bigger, faster and better products with more features, nowadays Good Enough products seem to conquer the market. Iconic examples are the good enough computer (the netbook), the good enough video camera (The Flip, Kodak Zi8) and good enough sound (mp3, Skype). I personally love the GE-Rev and it’s products for it lowers the threshold to create content for the social web (eg flickr, youtube, wordpress, facebook).

However, sometimes I get the feeling that some people apply the Good Enough principle in a wrong way. For example, lot’s of scientist’s programming skills seem to be ‘Good Enough’: it works so it’s done. Well, let me disagree. As Edsger Dijkstra said (he is talking about programming code):

Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a quality that decides between success and failure.

Or some manufacturers think that by making crap expensive, it stops being crap (Microsoft Sharepoint). Another itch is the seemingly complete random moment utensil manufacturers in the Occident stop in their development cycle. Take, for example, the simple case of saran wrap. How difficult is it to make an easy to use, functional casing for that?

Apparently very difficult.

Kaizen on the other hand is the philosophy of continuous improvement. It’s origin lies in the Japanese work culture and is best known for it’s biggest success story Toyota with it’s Total Quality Management system (allthough the latest callback didn’t really seem to advocate the use of Kaizen). What would Kaizen do to saran wrap?

Well, how remarkable, it is possible to make an easy to use, functional casing for saran wrap. Those Japanese nailed it again. You gotta love the Japanese utensil market. Every product is designed and improved to the best it can be. It really makes you wonder why Western stuff is that bad.

Now, I am a great fan of DIY (GE-Rev) and I’m also a great fan of Kaizen. How is that possible? Have I lost my mind?

No I did not loose my mind (at least, that’s what I force myself to believe). The point being is: where lies the value adding quality of the product or service? In the case of saran wrap the difference between Kaizen and Good Enough lies in the hugely improved usability.  In the case of e.g. netbooks Good Enough is a result of Kaizen. An analogy of the latter case is that of guitar playing skills. Johnny Rotten plays guitar Good Enough to play punk music. His goal is not to entertain listeners with his amazing guitar skills but to entertain listeners with the raw and direct energy of punk rock music. On the other hand, I wouldn’t buy the ‘Johnny plays Rachmaninov’ record if I’m looking for a skilled performance of classical music. Similarly the goal of the netbook is not to provide users the most powerful, highest resolution computing experience but to be small, cheap and process simple tasks (e-mail, browsing, text editing).

In short, try the best you can be by continuous improvement but always within the context of your goals and environment.