Want to Get Ahead? Stop Working So Much!

What have you given up for your business? Sleep, free time, a healthy work-life balance? There was a time when we thought you had to eat, sleep, and dream your business to make it work and to get ahead, but now a lot of experts are rethinking the whole “workaholic” thing. In fact, not only is overworking yourself not good for you, it’s also not good for your bottom line. It turns out that working more doesn’t equal working better, so to get ahead (and stay sane), you might want to rethink the long hours you’re putting in.

A Pointless Amount of Overtime

Here’s one of the best and worst things about modern working life: technology allows us to always be just a tap away from work, and presumably allows us to constantly be getting more and more done. You can always be on, and so can your employees, and we’re often expected (or expect ourselves) to be always on, working longer and longer hours. But are these long hours necessary – or even beneficial? Here’s good news for your social life: studies have been done on this subject, and the answer is an emphatic no.

Take, for example, a study out of Stanford University. According to economics professor John Pencavel, working longer hours simply does not make us better workers, or more productive. In fact, he found that productivity per hour declines sharply when a person works more than 50 hours a week. After 55 hours, productivity drops so much that putting in any more hours would be pointless. And, those who work up to 70 hours a week are only getting the same amount of work done as those who put in 55 hours. Wait, what?

And how about this: in a study of consultants by Erin Reid, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, managers could not tell the difference between employees who actually worked 80 hours a week and those who just pretended to. Reid was not able to find any evidence that those employees actually accomplished less, or any sign that the overworking employees accomplished more.

The funny thing is, we’ve actually known about this for a while. According to Harvard Business Review, “In the 19th century, when organized labor first compelled factory owners to limit workdays to 10 (and then eight) hours, management was surprised to discover that output actually increased – and that expensive mistakes and accidents decreased. This is an experiment that Harvard Business School’s Leslie Perlow and Jessica Porter repeated over a century later with knowledge workers. It still held true. Predictable, required time off (like nights and weekends) actually made teams of consultants more productive.”

So how can all this be? You probably already know the likely answer: the stress and fatigue that come with working long hours just aren’t conducive to working to your full potential. According to Pencavel, “In a nationally representative survey of almost 30,000 U.S. workers interviewed between August 2001 and May 2003, almost 38% replied affirmatively to the question, ‘Did you have low levels of energy, poor sleep, or a feeling of fatigue in the past two weeks?’ Full-time workers were more likely to lose productive time from fatigue than those working part-time.” You could have told us that, right?

Not only that, but you’re probably even more tired than you think, and the effects of being tired are also probably more pronounced than you think. Studies show that only 1-3% of the population can sleep five or six hours a night without suffering some performance drop-off; cut your sleep down to that amount for multiple nights in a row and you could be looking at a hit to your reaction speed, short-term and long-term memory, ability to focus, decision-making capacity, math processing, cognitive speed, and spatial orientation. In addition, for every 100 people who think they’re in the 1-3%, only five actually are.

And maybe it’s not just that. Maybe, as Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, a Stanford scholar and author of “Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less,” writes “Busyness is not a means to accomplishment, but an obstacle to it.” He argues in his book that when we define ourselves by our “work, dedication, effectiveness and willingness to go the extra mile,” it’s easy to think that doing less is the real barrier to success – but maybe if we took the time to clear our minds, rest, and refocus, we could be getting things done in a better way.

A Worldwide Study

Not convinced that all this extra work isn’t making us more productive? We’ve got another study for you! And this 2021 study didn’t just look at individual workers; it compared the productivity of workers by country, along with how much they worked.

The B2B marketplace Expert Market looked at the workforces of 42 countries around the world, determining their productivity level by dividing the annual gross domestic product (GDP) – the value of all the goods and services produced within each country over a year – by the average number of hours full-time and part-time employees worked over a year.

Where did the US rank? We were 11th overall in productivity out of the 42 countries, which doesn’t sound so bad – but the more interesting part of the findings was that all of the ten countries ahead of us worked less than us. For example, in Luxembourg, the tiny European country at the top of the list, employees worked 1,427 total hours in 2020 and produced an average of $84.77 per person per hour, while in the US, we worked 1,767 total hours and produced an average of $36.94 per person per hour.

That means that workers in Luxembourg worked a whole lot less than we did, but their productivity was more than double ours! All of this data should lead us to the conclusion that overwork is just not worth it financially – but an even bigger problem is that it’s just not worth what it’s doing to our health.

What Is Overworking Doing to Our Health?

Research has shown that working too much can make many of the skills we use in modern working life, like interpersonal communication, making judgment calls, reading other people’s faces, or managing your own emotional reactions way more difficult. As we’ve already talked about, that’s probably because of the stress and exhaustion that overworking brings on. But stress and exhaustion aren’t just affecting the way we work, it’s also seriously affecting our health.

Numerous studies by Marianna Virtanen of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and her colleagues (as well as other studies) have found that overwork and the resulting stress can lead to all sorts of health problems, including impaired sleep, depression, heavy drinking, diabetes, impaired memory, and heart disease. Yikes.

Not only that, but the World Health Organization (WHO) did a study on deaths from stroke and heart disease related to working more than 55 hours a week, and the results were shocking. They found that long working hours led to 745,000 deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease in 2016, a 29% increase since 2000. When broken down, they found that deaths from heart disease due to working long hours had increased by 42%, and from stroke by 19%.

All of this is bad enough when taken on its own, but you also have to remember that poorer health means higher health insurance/medical costs, lost time at work due to illness, presenteeism, and sky-high rates of employee turnover. So if working more and more is bad for you, bad for your employees, and bad for your business, sounds like it’s time to find a better work-life balance, right?

Finding a Better Work-Life Balance

So what can you do to find a better work-life balance, and encourage your employees to do the same? You and your employees can achieve a reasonable work-life balance if you all commit to the following steps: illustration of a man with a laptop sitting on an hourglass

Set your hours, and stick to them! – Work when it’s time to work, and then go home and power down when it’s time to stop. Don’t work outside of your working hours unless absolutely necessary – those emails will still be there tomorrow!
Prioritize your time – We’ve talked before about ways to more effectively manage your time, such as using the Eisenhower Matrix to determine what is urgent versus what is truly important. We’ve also talked about dealing with all of those little things that waste time at your business – check that out here
Block off your time – Need another way to make sure you’re not overworking? Try dividing up your schedule into blocks of time, so you don’t commit to taking on more than you can actually get done.
Use technology – Try using things like time and attendance software tools that include timeclocks, so you can keep track of how long certain recurring tasks take and either cut some out (see our advice in the two articles we linked to above), or better manage how they’re done, as well as more effectively block off your schedule.
Take breaks – Yes, you heard us: you and your employees should always take some time off during the day, the week, and certainly on the weekends – take all the time that’s coming to you/them! Better yet, take vacations, and get away from work totally for a while (and no checking emails!)

Work is important, but not that important – not important enough to risk your health, your employees’ health, and the health of your business. If you’re overworking yourself or your employees, it’s time to take stock and find a better work-life balance for everyone – it’ll do you and your business good!

Why Having a Multigenerational Workforce Can Benefit Your Business

There is strength in diversity. That statement holds true for all of society, and it holds true for the business world, as well. Having a workforce that is racially diverse and made up of different genders and orientations makes not only for a more socially interesting place to work, it actually also makes for a stronger business! But when we talk about diversity in the workplace, there’s one type of difference that we often overlook: age. We talk about multicultural workplaces, but we don’t often talk about multigenerational workplaces, and that could be a mistake. And not because you could be opening yourself up to an ageism lawsuit, but because limiting yourself to a younger population at work could mean missing out on the benefits of a multigenerational workforce. So how could having a range of ages working for your business benefit you?

The Benefits of a Multigenerational Workforce

We’re involved in the workforce at an interesting and unprecedented time: it’s possible to be working somewhere or running a business where up to 5 generations of employees are present! From Boomers to Gen Zers, there is a wide range of ages getting down to business these days; the problem is that we often view this diversity as a hindrance to growth. Surely older workers will slow others down, or there will be intergenerational tension, right? Wrong.

In fact, according to a Harvard Business white paper, “Each of these five generations is vastly different, but research shows that these differences have very little impact on the way we act or what motivates us at work.” And we’ll go a step further: most research – and real world examples – show us that having a multigenerational workforce can actually lead to greater productivity and growth. How? Consider the following benefits of having an age-diverse employee population:

Gives Businesses a Solid Pipeline of Talent

It makes sense: widen your recruitment efforts, and look at a wider range of candidates, and you’ll have a more solid pipeline of talent available to you. Reevaluating the way you recruit so you can attract employees from all generations means you’ll end up expanding the talent pool available for you to fill open positions, and tapping into unreached areas.

Not only that, but if you make the effort to retain the older members of your workforce, you’ll be able to keep up a level of productivity and institutional knowledge that are expensive and difficult to replace. After all, how can you bring up a new generation of workers without the help and knowledge of those who have come before them?

Increases innovation and creativity

gears with a red arrow pointing upward — *Having wide range of employees can help increase innovation and company culture.*

Younger workers get all the credit for having new, fresh ideas, but there’s also something else they have: less experience. So they might be able to bring the goods when it comes to new approaches and current trends, but older workers can bring a more measured approach based on strategies that have worked in the past, and the balance between these things can end up being a beautiful thing.

That’s not to say that older workers shouldn’t be given the opportunity to innovate. In fact, when everyone on a team has the freedom and support to share diverse opinions and ideas, it creates an energetic environment that utilizes the strengths of everyone at the table, whether those strengths are wisdom and experience, or a daring new approach. In one survey, 83% of workers said that they are able to come up with more innovative ideas and solutions because they work in an age-diverse team! So if you’ve got a workforce made up of all generations, you could find yourself with new products/services, improved processes, and interesting strategies that result in business growth.

Enhances company culture

Did you know that 46% of job candidates believe culture is very important in the application process, with a grand total of 88% of job seekers citing it as at least of relative importance? The culture at a business is also important for retention: employees who don’t like their organization’s culture are 24% more likely to quit. Not only that but a whopping 88% of employees believe that a strong company culture is key to a business’ success.

Employees’ opinions aside, a positive work culture is linked to higher rates of employee engagement, which has been shown to improve productivity and profitability. So what does this have to do with an age-diverse team? When companies have employees with a diverse range of ages, experience, knowledge and tenure, it can dramatically enhance the culture. After all, people with varying perspectives, backgrounds and life experiences help to create an energized workforce that builds/nurtures relationships and learns from each other.

Supports succession planning

We’ve seen a whole lot of people do a whole lot of quitting over the last few years. But the “Great Resignation” aside, losing employees is always a fact of life, and you’ve got to be ready for it! That can include leveraging the skills of the older employees that you have on your team. While some employers might see having older workers as a problem (since they are closer to retirement age), you should actually see it as a competitive advantage. You just need to properly leverage workers’ institutional knowledge, experience, skill sets, and strengths by encouraging cross-generational mentoring.

If you’ve got a multigenerational workforce, you’ll have built-in training opportunities, which will enable you to promote from within. That’s always a good thing, since employees familiar with your business and its culture will be more ready to fit right into their new roles. In addition, when employees have opportunities to advance, it leads to increased retention and less turnover, which can save you a whole lot of money.

Can affect your brand

Sometimes you want to look young and hip, and sometimes you need customers to see you as experienced, knowledgeable, and well-established. Having more seasoned workers in the mix can help you to put your best foot forward in certain situations; not only that, but being seen as an inclusive, diverse, and professional place of business could take you even further.

How to Make It Work

Let’s go back to the benefits listed above. They are very real, and they are things that you could be easily taking advantage of – but you’ve got to get there! So the following are a few notes on creating an age-diverse workforce, and making it work for your business.

Think about how you recruit and retain employees

If you want a more age-diverse workforce, the first thing you’ve got to do is find that more age-diverse workforce, right? That means reevaluating your recruitment efforts: you need to update your job descriptions with language that appeals to everyone, and look for different avenues of recruitment.

Bring employees together

Like we said, watching your employees collaborate and innovate is a beautiful thing. But how can you get them to this point? One way is to try a “reverse mentoring” programming, in which younger employees pair with older employees to share their ideas. This shouldn’t simply be the younger folks schooling the older ones on tech topics and social media trends, and it certainly shouldn’t ever feel patronizing; on the contrary, it should be a two-way street, with those paired together offering both of their perspectives, making the learning a mutual experience.

Remember, while younger employees might know more about tech and trends, “Seasoned employees have a lot more to teach junior employees about business intuition,” says Aaron Harvey, executive creative director at Ready Set Rocket. “Business is much more than trends and technology. It’s applied intuition that takes years of experience to develop.”

Work on leadership and communication

Some surveys show that employees of different ages sometimes find it difficult to communicate with coworkers outside of their age group. This should come as no surprise, but it doesn’t have to be that way. With that being said, an environment where people with a wide range of perspectives working to their mutual benefit, and the benefit of your business, doesn’t happen by accident – it begins with leadership.

According to Dennis Collins, senior director of marketing at West Unified Communications Services, you need to “Establish a solid understanding of who makes up your staff and the different dynamics at play,” and you shouldn’t be afraid to open the lines of communication in a respectful way. “Having an open and candid conversation about the benefits that come from a multigenerational workforce makes everyone feel more comfortable voicing their needs and concerns,” says Collins.

Don’t focus on one age group

It kind of feels like we’re spending all of our time focusing on the needs of one group of employees – often the younger generations. We want to make sure we’re speaking their language, and adopting the tools they prefer, but this can be a big mistake. Again according to Collins, “Ignoring the needs of any group of people in a company will result in a drop in productivity and unhappy employees.” So don’t worry about keeping up with every single latest trend; think more about looking for what works in your current culture, and make sure everyone feels spoken to and included.

If you’ve got an age-diverse team at your business, you don’t have a problem on your hands – on the contrary, you could be sitting on a gold mine! And if you’re looking around and seeing a lot of fresh faces, but not a lot of diversity of viewpoint, you might want to reconsider your recruitment process, and add the spice of age into your workplace. But remember, to make the most out of a multigenerational workforce, and to get all of the benefits we laid out above, you need to be the right kind of leader, and work on bringing people together so the sparks of innovation can fly. Just follow our tips above, and you’ll get there in no time – and we want to hear about your experiences with an age-diverse team!

Are OTT Ads The Right Investment For You And Your Business?

man at computer — With so many advertising platforms available, you might not know how to pick the right one, or where to start.

As a small business owner you have tons of advertising options coming at you from every direction. To say it’s overwhelming is an understatement! There are countless platforms and opportunities where you can spend your advertising budget, but there’s a lesser known new kid on the advertising block that you should check out: over-the-top (OTT). While traditional television ads may have been perceived as too expensive or unattainable, their cousin over-the-top ads might just be your best option to get the most bang for your advertising buck.

What is OTT?

computer — OTT advertising refers to advertising delivered directly to viewers via streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix.

OTT stands for over-the-top which is a type of advertising on streaming TV. Any content delivered to viewers over the internet (as opposed to a traditional cable box) is OTT content. So your favorite streaming service like youtube, hulu, or any other non traditional TV service that offers ads would be considered OTT. The biggest advantage of this type of advertising is that advertisers can create personalized, varied marketing messages that you are able to measure in a way that you cannot do with traditional TV advertising. While the advertising content isn’t much different (if at all) than what you’d see while watching traditional television, the specific demographic filtering features is what differentiates it. OTT allows for hyper-target audiences to be reached which is making it more desirable to advertisers to really pinpoint the audience they want. Let’s say you are selling a hot new children’s art toy. Instead of putting your ads on a channel and anyone watching that channel can see it, with OTT you can narrow down your audience to a specific show, a specific account type, specific areas, and even specific habits. This really helps you make sure the people most likely to purchase your product or service are the ones who see your ads, making sure you get the most bang for your buck.

Why OTT?

computer and graphs — OTT data provides valuable information to help advertisers understand the viewer’s habits and preferences.

Television commercials are quickly becoming a thing of the past because of over-the-top ads. Regular cable and broadcast TV advertising simply doesn’t allow the precision to target audiences the way OTT advertising does. This is great for advertisers because they can spend their money on OTT ads that will be delivered to viewers using these streaming services. OTT cannot be skipped, closed out, and viewers cannot install any kind of software that blocks these ads. Beyond that, advertisers can take their ads and pick a demographic more specific than the broad demos used for TV advertising such as women 25-54. They can now not only target women between 30-35 with at least one child who owns a home and 2 cars. It’s that specificity that makes OTT stand out among the sea of weaker advertising options.

Since OTT ads are delivered on any device that streams video over the internet, the options are more vast than a television sitting in someone’s home. The net of OTT ads is cast to all phones, laptops, smart TV’s, and even gaming consoles that stream videos over the internet so they are not limited to one television with a cable box. The data that can be drawn from OTT ads is unmatched. The detailed data of ad performance allows the advertiser to really find out whether or not their ad was effective, use that as a tool to optimize future ads, and adjust their strategy going forward.

When taking a look at all of the advertising options out there, OTT is one to strongly consider. Traditional TV advertising is a shot in the dark. You can pick channels or networks but you never really know if you are reaching your target audience, and you have no way to analyze your results accurately. With all of the options and platforms offering OTT, there is sure to be one that will fit your business, reach your target audience, and get your message across.

Looking for an Investment? Avoid These Mistakes

Running a small business requires passion, expertise, and time, all of which you might have plenty of (well, you could probably use more time!) But it can also require a whole lot of money, which you might not have as much of, especially if you’re just starting out. There are multiple funding options to look into, like loans and other types of debt, but you can also consider seeking out investors who could give your business a cash infusion. But before you speak to anyone, you need to know the pitfalls that a lot of small business owners fall prey to! So take a look at these common mistakes to avoid when seeking investments for your business.

Where to Start

First things first: you need prospective investors to pitch to. Where can you look for people, groups, or businesses that might be willing to put up some cash to get your business idea up and running, or to inject some cash into your existing business? There are plenty of options, including: silhouette of 2 people sitting down from each other

Friends and family

Equity financing investment firms and equity crowdfunding sites that will help put your business in front of potential investors

Venture capitalists

Angel investors

Incubators (for getting business ideas off the ground)

Accelerator programs (for existing businesses)

Crowdfunding platforms

Remember, though, there are mistakes you can make at this stage. Some mistakes to avoid include:

Not keeping things professional with investors who are friends or family members

If you have a personal relationship with an investor, you still need to stay as professional as possible, otherwise things could get ugly, fast, and you could end up losing an investor and a friend. You need to explain the details of your plan and create a contract that lays out any terms and conditions attached to the funding. Clarify repayment terms in the contract, including any interest rates, partial ownership, or other stipulations. Be as upfront as you can about expectations for all involved parties, so things stay beneficial for everyone involved – and civil.

Sending your business plan unsolicited to prospective investors

Thinking a venture capitalist, angel investor, or like-minded business owner is the way to go? Be careful about contacting them cold. The majority of them often don’t read unsolicited emails, since they get hundreds, if not thousands, of such emails, and don’t have the time to sift through them all. A better tactic in this situation would be to get a referral to an investor, maybe through someone in their network, like a lawyer, an entrepreneur from one of their portfolio companies, or a fellow venture capitalist. Ask around in your network, as well, and see what you can find out.

silhouette of a man holding books with glasses on — *Before pitching to an investor, you want to do your homework first!*

Not doing your homework on the investor

Some investors have a niche for what type of businesses they will invest in (like tech, for example), so be sure you know something about each investor you’re contacting. Not doing your homework on investors will make you look unprofessional and won’t get you very far, especially if you’re trying to pitch to the wrong people. But knowing something about the background of prospective investors will allow you to have meaningful conversations, and hopefully get the ball rolling.

Pitching to your ideal investor first

You might think that you should go right to your first choice investor, but you should actually treat your pitches more like a good meal: eat your least favorite part first, and then get to your favorite things, and dessert (are we the only ones who do that?)! Seriously, it’s actually a good idea to do a few pitches with “warm” or “friendly” investors that you aren’t so, well, invested in, so you can refine your pitch and get ready for the big one.

Not checking out other pitch decks

First things first, have you started creating your “pitch deck,” or a brief presentation, usually made up of slides, that gives investors a summary of your business and business plan? Before you finalize yours, make sure you check out samples to make sure you know how to make a successful one. When it comes to your pitch deck, you’ll want to avoid things like: computer with a presentation on the screen

Having too many slides with too much information in each – 15-20 slides is enough. You’ll probably only have an hour for your pitch, so don’t go into too much detail in each slide; you can always provide more info after your initial pitch. It’s more important that your pitch deck is crisp and clear.
Not highlighting your and your team’s experience and expertise

Not offering a competitive analysis

Not giving evidence of current customers/interest, if you have any

What to Avoid When Pitching to Investors

Hopefully, now you’ve got some investors ready to listen, and you’re ready to pitch – this is the time to really get it right! So let’s look at some mistakes to avoid when pitching to investors.

Making unrealistic projections

You’re excited about your business, and that’s great – but is it really going to grow to $500 million over the next three years? We hope it will, but that kind of figure just looks pie-in-the-sky to investors, who want to see you back up your claims with realistic figures. Avoid making any projections that are difficult to justify.

Not having a good grasp on your marketing strategy

You know your business, but you also have to know how you’re going to get other people interested. Being vague on your marketing strategy can be a red flag for investors, who will want to know you’ve thought through how you will get noticed by prospective customers in a cost-effective way, whether it’s through social media, content marketing, or paid search engine ads.

Brushing off tough questions

No one is just going to throw money at you, unfortunately! They’re going to ask you a lot of questions before they make their decisions, and some of those questions will be tough. It’s your job to anticipate the questions that will come up during your pitch, but if you do get a question that you haven’t anticipated, don’t tell an investor you will get back to them later. Be ready to think on your feet and answer as best you can: that skill is something investors will be looking for.

Being unclear on customer acquisition costs

Hopefully customers will come flocking to your business, but it’s usually a little more difficult – and expensive – than that! Show investors that you understand how much it actually costs to acquire each customer, as well as that you know how to calculate the lifetime value of each customer you bring on board.

Not giving your product or service its due

Sure, your customers will be at your business’ core, but your business wouldn’t be anything without the product or service you’re selling! That means you need to be ready to really highlight your product or service, answering questions about things like what differentiates your product/service, what milestones you’ve met, how it has evolved, how you could enhance it in the future, what you’ve learned from earlier versions, etc. Better yet, you should be able to demo your product or service, whether physically or with a video presentation.

Avoiding bringing up risks

caution sign — *When pitching, be upfront, and show that you have thought through how to mitigate those risks.*

No business is all rainbows and unicorns (unless you’re in the rainbow and unicorn business) – there will always be risks. Investors know this; they’re big boys and girls and can handle hearing about them. In fact, they will want to hear about them, and will ask you tough questions about the risk associated with investing in your business if you don’t bring them up. So it’s better to take control of the conversation, be upfront, and show that you have thought through how to mitigate those risks.

After You’ve Pitched

Finally, once you’ve pitched your business to your potential investors, there are two more big mistakes you should avoid.

Failing to follow up

You should always send a thank-you note to an investor you’ve pitched to – and we’re not talking about a generic form letter or email. Customize each of your thank yous, and make sure they sound genuine and personal.

Being afraid to say “no”

You put your time and effort into making pitches to multiple investors, and now you’ve got a bite. Buuuuut you’re just not sure that the investor who’s interested is offering you a good deal, or maybe you even feel like they might be trying to take advantage. Trust us, it’s better to say “no” to a bad investor, and keep up the search for funding, than to take on the headaches of that bad investor. So always be discerning about who you allow to get involved in your business, and be prepared to say “no” if it’s in your best interest.

There are a lot of mistakes and missteps you can make when you start looking for and pitching to investors (and the above are just a few!) but don’t panic. No one mistake will ever be fatal to your business; in fact, you can use them as learning experiences to improve your pitching prowess, as well as your skills as an entrepreneur. Remember, honing your pitch will only make you more knowledgeable about your business, which will be a good thing for you, and an attractive quality for investors. Good luck out there!

Can the Japanese Concept of Kaizen Help You Grow?

The writer Mark Twain once said, “Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” Sounds pretty deep, huh? And although he wasn’t talking about a strategy for business growth, that quote could easily be the tagline for the Japanese philosophy known as “kaizen,” which many businesses have adopted because of its focus on continuous improvement to create more value with less waste. So what is kaizen, and is it something that could be helpful to your business?

What Is Kaizen?

According to Maasaki Imai, the management consultant credited with bringing the concept of kaizen into the business world, “The message of the Kaizen strategy is that not a day should go by without some kind of improvement being made somewhere in the company.” That might sound like a lot of pressure, but kaizen, which translates to “continuous improvement,” or “change for the better,” puts the focus on improvement as a gradual and methodical process. In fact, in the concept of kaizen, there is no perfect “end” to something – everything can be improved upon.

If this sounds like it could end in a rigid and ruthless pursuit of efficiency, which overlooks employees or treats them like machines, that is not the case. When implementing a kaizen-focused strategy, you should be thinking about a variety of ideas that aren’t just focused on output, but also on employees. Kaizen means making the work environment more efficient and effective by creating a team atmosphere, improving everyday procedures, ensuring employee engagement, and making a job more fulfilling, less tiring, and safer.

In fact, employee engagement is a huge part of kaizen: since kaizen recognizes that people who perform certain tasks and activities are the most knowledgeable about that task/activity, a central part of kaizen is including them to create change as the best strategy for improvement. That means employees should be given autonomy to take action on improvements themselves, which will build a culture of engagement. And, since a major component of kaizen is recognizing that even very small changes can make a big difference, everyone’s contribution is valued, although teamwork is the most central component of kaizen.

One of the most well known examples of a company implementing the kaizen concept is Toyota: within its production system, Toyota encourages and empowers all employees to identify areas of potential improvement and create viable solutions.

So how does kaizen work in theory and practice? Let’s look at the five key principles behind it, and some strategies for implementing it in the workplace.

The 5 Principles of Kaizen

According to kaizen, in order to strive toward continuous improvement, your business should work on these five key principles:

Know your customers – Knowledge of your customers and their interests will enhance their experience, and create value for everyone.

Let it flow – This principle refers to the target of zero waste in an organization. Sound impossible? That’s the thing about kaizen – you’re never going to achieve zero waste, but if you could that would mean the process of improving would stop. And remember: there is no perfect end point in kaizen.

Go to Gemba – “Gemba” translates to “the real place,” and as the leader of an organization, you need to follow the action, as value is created where things are actually happening.

Empower people – Teams should all have goals to work towards, and should be given the right tools and processes to achieve these goals. In addition, you need to make sure that no one is given contradictory goals, so everyone can work together as a team.
Be transparent – To know if you’re improving, you need to track your performance and progress with real data and metrics.

These five principles should keep all of those small changes coming, and should hopefully lead to three major outcomes, which are the three pillars of kaizen:

Good housekeeping – This means that your workplace should be neat, clean, and efficient, so that materials and tools are easy to locate, use, and maintain. All of this should help you maintain a balance, and not have either an excess in production, or a shortage of material or goods.

Elimination of waste – Anything that doesn’t add value should be eliminated and removed from your processes to ensure that only valuable services and products are offered. The goal of eliminating waste should help you to improve relationships and communications with outsiders like suppliers, and to provide maximum value and benefit for your customers.

Standardization – Standardization involves producing products and services to pre-set specifications. The standards, though, should be appropriate for your business, as well as accepted as fair and achievable by everyone who is involved in the process. Ultimately, a good standard should create the safest, easiest, and most efficient way to perform a job.

Using Kaizen in Your Business

So why might you consider using the central ideas of kaizen in your business? If you’re a small business owner, chances are there are a ton of things you want to do for your business, but you just can’t seem to get to it all, maybe because it’s all just too much and you feel overwhelmed, or like you have to do everything yourself.

Changes don’t happen at your business because changing everything you’d like to, or making a few major changes, just seems like too big a task and, again, totally overwhelming. But the advantage to kaizen is that it is all about incremental, step-by-step change. It’s a continuous process, not a time-bound one, so you can focus on separating out the urgent and the important.

Another big advantage to kaizen is that it is meant to empower both owners/managers and employees, and give everyone the tools to effect positive change in your business, so you are not the one shouldering the entire burden of change making.

checklist with a green pencil — *If you want to try out Kaizen, then try creating a checklist of “plan-do-check-act.”*

If all of this sounds right to you, where do you start? Well, since kaizen requires a lot of collaboration, teamwork, and discussion, the first step to implementing this style of workflow should be to get everyone on board. You’ll have to create a workplace that doesn’t resist change; in fact, employees need to be motivated and fully involved in the change.

The next step, then, is to get everyone involved in identifying problems and solutions; they should also know that they are empowered to make changes. So, for example, if you have an employee working in customer service who has feedback on how to improve the processes in that department, they should have the means to give that feedback, and then they should even be made responsible for implementing those changes.

And if you’re not sure how to get the above process of implementing those changes rolling, there is actually a four-step cycle to follow to make improvements, known as the PDCA cycle. PDCA stands for “plan-do-check-act,” and it looks like this:

Plan: Map out the changes you want to make so that everyone knows what to expect when trying to solve a problem
Do: Implementing the best solution to the problem
Check: Evaluate the solution to the problem to see if it worked
Act: Determine whether or not the solution should become a company standard, or if it needs further changes. If you decide you need to implement more changes, go back to the plan step and start the process over.

We can often get caught up in stressing over the big changes we think need to be made, or we give ourselves strict deadlines for making major changes, but we often just end up getting overwhelmed, and those big changes don’t seem to materialize. If this sounds familiar, stop and consider that maybe making small changes as you go could add up, and result in some pretty big positive changes for your business. Using the concept of kaizen could help you to remove issues at your business from the root, and improve the way you work for good, all while taking some of the burden off of your shoulders. So does it sound like something that could work for your business?

Are You Sacrificing Innovation for Efficiency?

What are you focused on for your business? Do you have your sights set on improving efficiency, and making sure your business is running like a well-oiled machine? That’s a great goal, but is there a downside to constantly striving toward greater efficiency? There could be: according to some experts, efficiency might just be one of the enemies of innovation. Let’s look at why, how a return to creativity could boost your business by making you more innovative, and how you can inject some of that important creative thinking back into your work.

Efficiency Vs Innovation

According to Investopedia, “The term efficiency refers to the peak level of performance that uses the least amount of inputs to achieve the highest amount of output. Efficiency requires reducing the number of unnecessary resources used to produce a given output, including personal time and energy.” Sounds pretty austere, but many business owners do get caught up in the importance of speeding up processes, eliminating waste, improving quality, reducing costs, and generally pleasing customers, and embrace this way of thinking.

Now, we’re not saying that those things aren’t important, but really consider what it means to be efficient: according to the business definition of efficiency, you’ll have to limit the time and energy put into processes in order to truly be efficient. And what is something that takes time and energy? Innovation – creating new products, services, or ways of doing things. Innovating also means trying things that don’t work, and that looks wasteful – and who likes waste?

But creativity is messy, and can’t be reduced to inputs and outputs, or given limited space to grow. And creativity, and the innovation it breeds, could end up making all the difference in your efforts to separate yourself from the rest of the crowd, and ultimately grow.

The Importance of Creativity

Sure, the time and energy you put into experimenting and working towards innovation will have an uncertain future payback. In addition, cutting back on anything can have short-term payouts, making it tempting to work on improving current products and systems rather than finding new ones. But if you’re putting in less you could ultimately end up getting less back, right.

So you might want to consider taking some time to prioritize creativity and innovation over efficiency. Why specifically? Because:

Your business’ survival could depend on it – Think of it this way, no matter how efficient business’ producing encyclopedias became, they were always going to be killed off by innovations like Wikipedia. Or if you’re running a taxi company, you can tweak your day-to-day operations, but that won’t protect you from ride-sharing apps. The takeaway: you can improve your current product, service, or way of doing things with as much efficiency as you like, but it’s the businesses that take chances and innovate that could ultimately end up on top.
You’ll get a competitive advantage – Your business might not become the victim of such extreme examples as above, but at the very least, you’ll probably end up with a product or service that is overlooked because it’s old and just part of the routine. If you’ve got something new, you’ll get more attention, and will probably be able to command higher prices.
You’ll have more engaged employees, and a better talent pool to choose from – Nobody likes to do the same old thing every day, and no one wants to see their talent and creativity go to waste in a stale environment. Not only that, but nobody wants to be treated like a machine that is constantly being told to work more efficiently! So, being known as an innovator will mean you’ll get a better pool of applicants to choose from, and your current employees will be energized by a creative work environment. That could make them more productive, without you having to resort to the austerity of focusing solely on efficiency.
You might just learn something! – Striving for efficiency might teach you how to cut back or increase output, but it probably won’t teach you much about what works and doesn’t in your industry, or what customers want. Working towards innovation and being creative, on the other hand, means experimenting, showing early-stage products/services to customers and gauging their reactions, trying to solve real problems, and yes, getting things wrong – but getting things wrong is a great way to learn how to get things right!

Slow Down and Get Creative!

Again, we’re not knocking efficiency: you’ve got to get things done, after all, and some things should be done quickly and with less waste. But, with that being said, sometimes to be truly effective, you’ll have to reduce the pressure to be so efficient, slow down, and try a little creativity and innovation. But if you’re wondering how to foster more creativity and innovation in your business, don’t worry – there are actually some pretty simple things you can do to get the ball rolling:

Give yourself space and time

What’s one major way we’ve managed to cram more efficiency into our working lives? By being connected All. The. Time. It seems like we can’t even wait in line for coffee without firing off a bunch of emails, or commute without jumping in on a conference call. And while we might think we’re making the most of our time this way, are we really? This ruthless efficiency with our time is actually taking away the space for thinking, reflecting, and generating ideas, so try to resist the urge to be plugged in all the time. It’s tough, we know, but don’t worry: those emails can wait.

Seek out difference

You and your team are totally on the same page, right? You know exactly how each of you wants things done, you’ve got the same knowledge base, and you’re working towards the same goals. Great for efficiency, but maybe not for creativity, so go out of your way to connect with new people who don’t share the same exact experience and views as you. They might work in different industries, spend their time in different places with types of people, or think differently than you do – and all of these differences could spur you to think in new ways.

Get out of the office

laptop outside on a tree stump — *Try to get innovative by working outside and getting some inspiration.*

Yes, we know, it’s hard to think that you can work efficiently anywhere but at a desk in an office, but being in that kind of space all day can really numb your mind. We’re not saying you have to immediately jump into holding meetings at the beach or on a forest path, but don’t be afraid to change up where you do your work, and where you consult with your team. A change of scenery could be just what you need for inspiration! But, of course, don’t forget to go to the beach, the forest, the park, or wherever inspires you and feeds your brain, instead of dulls it.

In addition, getting out of the office in other ways could also help you be more creative. Take classes, go away for the weekend to a new place, or ride your bike during the day. Getting out of your same-old daily routine can be invigorating, and can wake up your brain and get those creative juices flowing.

Inject more creativity into your own life

Creativity isn’t always easy to just switch on. You’ve got to feed it. And a great way to make sure you can be creative in your working life is to find creative pursuits that interest you in your personal life. That doesn’t mean you have to all of a sudden become a painter or a concert pianist: you can do photography right on your phone, take a dance class, or even learn a new language. And get this: according to a study in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, different expressions of creativity can build your creative muscle and actually make your brain more efficient!

Get your zzzz’s

As we talked about earlier, we often think that being efficient means using every minute of our time, and that means staying up late to get things done, and/or getting up at the crack of dawn to clear our inboxes. But missing out on sleep means your brain won’t be functioning at peak performance. In fact, research published in Trends in Creative Sciences Journal suggests resting boosts creative problem solving, and that’s probably more important to your business than shooting off a few extra emails.

Efficiency versus innovation: it’s a tough choice, right? It doesn’t have to be: remember that fable about the tortoise and the hare? If you were going to take that story and apply it to your business, the moral would be that sometimes you have to go slow to get ahead, or even to go fast. Pressure to speed up and be more efficient could end up burning you out, and won’t necessarily move you forward, while creativity (even with the little bit of mess it can leave behind) might feel slower, but can lead to the innovation that your business needs to grow.