We are so excited this week.  Kaizen, (or LEAN) is one of our favourite subjects and we refer to it a lot in our Change JAM chats.  We thought that we would unpack what is Kaizen.

We have so much to say about Kaizen that we have split our introduction to the subject into two episodes.  In this one we talk about Kaizen as a philosophy, not just an improvement method.  We talk about Kaizen leadership, and about embedding Kaizen principles into team and organisational culture.  

We introduce the concepts of Waste versus Value, and Flow.  Jo waxes lyrical about "truely, madly, deeply" loving Kaizen principles and what this means in practice.  We both have experienced business leaders who want a Kaizen practitioner to "do LEAN" to the business, but when we say "Lean starts with the leader", they're like... mmmm.. not so much.

Jo mentioned the Healthcare Homes, which for those of you who are thinking...what is this... the HealthCare Home model of care is a model that has Kaizen principles at its heart and it well recognised and adopted across New Zealand as well as many other countries in the world.  https://www.healthcarehome.org.nz/integrated-health-care-management-nz
for more info.

We will cover off the five methods of Kaizen (or LEAN) in our second part of this two part Kaizen special.  Can't wait!