Chapter 11

…and then the next

‘You don’t need to see the full staircase; just take the first step.’ Martin Luther King Jnr

In February 2023 as a life-long goal setter, I set myself a plan. I have a real affinity with breaking things down into smaller chunks; thinking big but starting small. Each new step and each new breakthrough enabling me to take a step further towards my intended goals. My need to write my book transcended my greatest expectations of who I am and who I could become.

Reading a number of books on the Japanese Philosophy of Kaizen helped me understand how taking tiny step steps could make a real difference to my professional and personal aspirations. I just needed to believe.

Being someone who will try anything once, perhaps not skydiving though, or anything that causes too much of an adrenalin rush, I like my feet planted firmly on the ground, thank you very much, I decided to build Kaizen into my everyday life and I absolutely love it. Kaizen has helped transform my life and to live it the way I want to live it.

Starting my academic journey as a published author, probably started with a very big step, having two papers published with a senior academic, but going it alone proved more difficult. I wasn’t ready. I was scared. What if I screwed up? What if my writing was rubbish? It was alright entrusting my writing career with someone experienced, but I wasn’t experienced. I was a novice. I wasn’t good enough to go it alone. Despite my misgivings however, I wasn’t ready to give up on my dreams to be a multi-published author just yet. I had after all, only just got started.

I took a small step for me, but perhaps a big step for someone else and I e-mailed the editor of a well-known occupational health journal. Editors are always looking for new writers so I thought he might give me a chance. Not only did he give me a chance, he also offered to help me publish. He read my work, told me where I could improve and essentially published everything I wrote.

I began to have other ideas about what I could write about and realised I could write about virtually anything I chose, not just my specialist field, and so I have. From International Nurses Day to International Women’s Day; women’s health to domestic violence, I have shared my blogs and reaped the rewards of taking those tiny, first steps.

So, where does Kaizen feature in all this?

Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy that promotes continuous improvement. The focus being on making sound professional judgements; empowerment; shared decision making and problem solving and together making things happen. Broken down into its 2 key components – Kai = change and Zen = good – simply put Kaizen means – change for the better.

Emerging post World War II Kaizen is linked to the post war development of Japan. Associated with maximum quality and performance, elimination of waste and efficiency in terms of work performance and work procedures it is considered one of the most ingenious approaches to organisation success of the twentieth century and remains so today.

Kaizen asks us to use the 5WH or 5 Why’s and How. Asking why 5x to get to the root cause of why we do something this approach helps to abolish old, traditional viewpoints, [personal and professional] and ingrained behaviours, which we may, on occasion, not even be aware of.

I would have loved to have used this in many of the places I worked. I think most of the senior people I worked with would have balked at the suggestion.

But what I hear you say has Kaizen to do with personal and professional development. What has it got to do with helping me create change in my life; get that new job I want; do something with my life? or just do something different?