Hello my dear friends,
Welcome to Mohanji Speaks.
In the mid 1940s,
World War II entered and many countries went into economic depression.
You must have read about this in books or must have seen them in videos or television.
So many companies were on the verge of bankruptcy or some of them closed down.
A similar situation happened to Toyota as well,
The car manufacturing company Toyota.
They had two problems,
One of them lack of finance and the other was management of resources.
So they did not really know how to overcome this situation.
Then they found a technique which is called Kai Zen.
Kai means change and Zen is wisdom,
Means wisdom of change.
That technique really helped them to get back on their feet.
I think it was Dr.
Downing who proposed this technique for this company which I could not verify maybe it is wrong but I think it was him.
And what he said was you have strength already.
If you use your strength well,
You can overcome this situation.
And the technique was very simple.
One step more each day in the path of progress.
That means where you are now,
Take one step forward.
So imagine all the employees,
Imagine there are 1000 employees in the company.
Each of them take one innovative step each day.
It's 1000 steps that day.
Every step forward,
Every improvement is one more step to progress.
And this method,
This technique literally got Toyota back to their feet.
Later on Canon and so many other organizations followed it but this Kai Zen technique became very popular.
That means one step a day,
One step leads to huge change.
I will explain it better.
Imagine you decided to take physical exercises.
Where do you start from?
How do you start?
So according to Kai Zen technique,
Take one push up a day.
Next day,
Two push ups.
Third day,
Three push ups.
Now in 50 days you would be taking 50 push ups.
So gradual progress,
One step at a time.
Consistent progress and then you reach great distance in no time.
So this is a medicine or a remedy for procrastination,
For inertia,
For all kinds of situations where you do know what to do.
And when you are in confused state,
This is the right thing to do.
Take one step forward.
Even if you cannot see the whole future,
Take a step forward.
And thus taking one step at a time,
You reach a lot.
Kai Zen technique is also known as one minute rule.
One minute rule simply means take a step wherever you are standing from.
One step forward.
So imagine you are doing something for a period of time,
Take one step forward from there and that will be improvement.
And this is especially good when you are in times of confusion,
Like sometimes you are procrastinating,
Sometimes inertia takes over,
Sometimes depression and various tamasic situations,
No inspiration.
That's a time when you can constantly improve through taking one step forward continuously,
Constantly.
Of course you should have vision.
Vision is important.
Where do you want to go?
You must know.
That is for sure.
Personally,
Officially,
In whichever level where you want to reach.
This is very important.
When you are moving a mission,
It's a collective thought,
Collective vision.
With collective vision,
If everybody takes one step forward and beat their tamas and it should be constant improvement,
Constant continuous thing.
If you do that,
Then you will see a huge change in the future.
But how do you know that you changed?
Only when you look back where you started from,
That's the only way you can know the progress.
If you want to know the progress,
You got to look back where you have started from and then you will see how much you have progressed.
It's a very important and very unique technique.
Imai Masaki has written a book about it.
There are so many books actually.
Imai Masaki's book is quite famous and he says small steps,
Big change.
So this is one of the thoughts which I wanted to leave you with today.
The Kaizen technique can probably transform our lives.
Take one step forward,
Inspire everybody to take one step forward.
So from a state of utter confusion,
Despair and even a state of collapse,
They brought Toyota back to a leading car manufacturer in the world.
And imagine Japan at that time,
After receiving two atomic bombs on its chest and huge severe economic depression due to war,
They came back in full regalia.
And please remember in the statistics taken in 2015 about the most hard working country or the people who work hard in each country,
Mexico came top.
Mexico was the first and Japan was the eighth.
But look at the progress,
Economic progress,
Stability,
Welfare,
Per capita income.
Japan is much higher and that's probably because of their steady one step at a time progress.
Slow and steady wins the race.
So this consistency and clarity are very,
Very important.
Clarity comes with purpose.
When you have clarity of purpose,
Clarity of action comes.
And when you know where you're going,
That is if you have a proper vision,
You can build clarity,
You can have clarity.
And then if you take one step at a time,
It will beat the procrastination,
It beat laziness and you can keep walking.
And each step will take you forward.
Small improvements and immediate improvement.
This is very important.
Small improvements,
But immediate,
Not tomorrow,
Not day after.
That is procrastination right now.
No inertia.
One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Like that each day,
Some improvement and then you will reach a lot in 50 days.
So I leave you with these thoughts today.
I hope you enjoyed this.
Please do think about it.
This is the food for thought today.
And this is a very practical way of improving your life.
Thank you very much.
Have a great day.
This is Mohanji.
