Friday, January 15, 2016

Catching up on blog posts

I don't know about you, but there are often things I start that then fall by the wayside. Blogging has been one of those; not that I haven't been writing "tips", it's just that they've only been going to my email list (send an email if you'd like to subscribe.)
So a few blog posts will catch up on the best email tips from the past year, starting with my experience from a trip to Japan a little over a year ago:


I just returned from Tokyo  - my first trip to Japan, and I was very impressed for many reasons. Aside from very polite people, they really do think things through. Three simple examples from my hotel: the elevators tell you which one will arrive next several floors before it arrives; the tracks for the curtains overlap in the middle (one curves behind the other); and in the morning as you are walking down the hallway they play pleasant bird sounds.
 
None of these are earth shattering, but they all make the experience a little bit more pleasant. And none require any significant amount of extra work. Elevators these days are all controlled by one building computer, which knows in advance which elevator it is sending where. The curved curtain tracks allow you to easily close the curtains tight (it gets light there early.) And bird sounds playing - simple.
 
When I mentioned these examples to my host, he said they were examples of  "kaizen". In North America,  "kaizen" usually is used to refer to continuous improvement in the sense of making things more efficient. But Wikipedia defines is simply as "good change", the idea of thinking things through.
 
A thought for you - what simple examples of "good change" could your organization implement to provide more value to your customers?
 

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