Principles of Total Improvement process

Measure it, manage it (You Can't Manage What You Don't Measure)
Goal: Zero Failures
Always can be improved (Kaizen: continuous improvement)
If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well
When a thing's well done, it's fun (and also: Make it fun and it will get done)

If you’re not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing here?

—Robert Townsend

All companies have 10 employees

Company A has hired you. Are you sure that you who have been hired by the A company? How many employees have the A company? A manager can easily coordinate the work of 5 or 7 other employees. Let’s say 10 people. Even 15 or 20. A single person dedicated managing 50 or 200 employees? Forget it. There are all kind of departments, sub-departments, middle management, whether formal or informal, sometimes competing with each other and whose objectives may be very similar, but not identical to the company. Reflect about it. Who are you working for?

If you don’t have time, you have nothing

Are you of those who say "I do not have time"?

That sentence makes no sense. Of course you have time. A lot of time. The question is: What do you do with your time?

Managing time is easy. Distinguish the urgent from the non-urgent, and the important from the non-important. And just do the important stuff.

How shall I ask?

Always remember the Win-win style (You win, I win).

Never ask humans the way you use to ask Google. Never think solely about what you could get.

Instead of this, put yourself in their shoes, and when you are going to ask something, think about what the other can get from you, however small it might be, in this simple interaction, as if that was the only interaction in the whole Universe.

Where is the know-how?

We are surrounded by know-how. A few meters away from you, lies the solution of the problem. If you look and don’t find... If you ask and have no answers... Change the way you look and ask!

Look. Think. Act. But not as usual

If you increase production, but no sales, what are you going to do with the excess of stock? That’s not Total Improvement. If you increase sales, but low quality, you may lose your best customers. That’s not Total Improvement. Look (but not as usual). Think (but not as usual). Act (but not as usual). That’s Total Improvement.