Want to solve a problem? Get your hands dirty

Just want to share with you a very interesting story about the management principle of Kiichiro Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Corporation.

One day Kiichiro Toyoda was walking through the vast plant when he came upon a worker scratching his head and muttering that his grinding machine would not run. Kiichiro took one look at the man, then rolled up his sleeves and plunged his hands into the oil pan. He came up with two handfuls of sludge. Throwing the sludge on the floor, he said: “How can you expect to do your job without getting your hands dirty!” - Excerpt from Toyota Way

This story clearly shows that in order to fix a problem, you must be prepare to get yourself to dig into the problem even if it requires you to dirty your hand in the process.

Constant Improvement on a daily basis? Why not.

"We place the highest value on actual implementation and taking action. There are many things which one does not understand and therefore, we ask them why dont you just go ahead and take action; try to do something?. You realize how little you know and you face your own failures and you simply can correct those failures and redo it again and at the second trial you realize another mistake or another thing you did not like so you can redo it once again. So by constant improvement based upon action, one can rise to the higher level of practice and knowledge” - Fujio Cho, President, Toyota Motor Corporation, 2002

The quote above made by Fujio Cho really sums up the essence of Kaizen, a Japanese Management philosophy. The spirit behind kaizen is making changes in incremental way that will eventually in time creates big changes. The key factor here is very simple... Action! Just act and do something whether it is the wrong way or right way is much better from not doing anything at all. Either way, you definitely will learn something and in the process makes you a better and stronger person than yesterday.