Kaizen and Mountain Biking (or how I learned to stop worrying and ride the jump)

 Reading Justin’s Process Over Outcome blog of a couple a weeks ago got me thinking about Kaizen. The concept of Kaizen is aimed at implementing processes for active continuous improvement, a concept that was pioneered by Toyota in the 1950s. In the Scrum Agile system of software development, teams also apply Kaizen by the use of “retrospectives” (process improvement meetings) where they identify one or two specific things to improve in the next work interval. Work processes that have built-in self-improvement components can work well, when adhered to.  

Kaizen can be applied to anything. As an example, a version of Kaizen helped me do something I thought I would never do – it was simply too scary.

My son and some neighborhood friends decided to transform our tiny suburban backyard into a mini mountain bike park. They built a big jump. They, being fearless teenagers, jumped it. I, being a (somewhat) sensible middle-aged man, didn’t. Then they made the jump bigger (think Evil Knievel soaring over the Grand Canyon). Now I was sure I’d never ever ride it. But behind the scenes there was magic at work, Kaizen magic. Ever since COVID hit, our family has been mountain biking regularly, and at the end of each ride I go over what I did well and what I didn’t. If I crashed , I focused on why it happened tried to eliminate that mistake on my next ride. It was about taking a conscious approach to this activity. Over time, through repetition and critical evaluation, I began developing skills I didn’t know I had. Then, a few weeks back, I looked again at the jump. It didn’t seem so massive. I pointed my bike and nailed it.  That’s Kaizen!     

At Acumen, we are focused on quality in all that we do, whether it’s developing new writing software, or delivering best-in-class pharmaceutical development services. As leader of our software team, I have introduced Kaizen to the services side, helping the teams think about new ways to build into our processes retrospectives to streamline and improve how we do things.

Bruce Pierce

Director of Product Development