“The moment you think you know everything, you're already done as a chef. You should just quit.”

—Niki Nakayama, owner/chef, n/naka restaurant, Los Angeles

You Could Just Do This, and You'd Succeed

Many successful businesspeople (and I agree with them) believe that if you're good at what you do and there's a market for what you do, you could just do this and you'd be successful: Never stop improving.

My guess is that almost all of the people who claim that they are always improving really aren't. They may be thinking about it, and I'll bet they're talking about it, but they're probably not really doing it.

When people tell me that they believe in continuous improvement, I ask them what they did last Thursday that made them better than they were last Wednesday. It's exceptionally rare that anyone is ever anything but completely stumped by that question. They remember that last Thursday was really busy and everyone was slammed and doing all they could just to keep up with what was going on. No one really had time to actually get better at anything. And the problem is that that's going to probably be true for every day. They were too busy to get better.

Lip Service

Nothing gets more lip service than the idea of continuous improvement. Everyone is for it. It's unanimous. Everyone agrees with the idea that constant and continuous improvement is essential to staying competitive.

And hardly anyone does it.

Most people try to improve occasionally, as a project, but rarely do we make the idea of always getting better a permanent and ever-present part of our thinking. The idea of constant improvement should always be in our thinking, strategies, and actions, not as a distraction from what we're doing, but as a natural part of our consciousness about it.

When we become intentional about creating an awareness of always getting better as a part of the way we do everything, then it becomes much easier to identify the “what” and “how” to get better. We usually set aside time to think about getting better, and in a vacuum, it's hard to do. Better to think about it every day, as a natural part of what we do, as natural as turning on the lights in the morning. Over the years I have noticed that top performers not only subscribe to the idea of continuous improvement, but have learned how to build identification of what to improve and how to improve into their work.

A Daily Ritual

Perhaps the simplest process for always getting better is to take a few minutes at the end of each day to synthesize and collect your thoughts from the day about how things could have gone better. I've had people ranging from airline pilots and stockbrokers to managers in manufacturing and ministers tell me that part of their daily work ritual is to take 15 minutes at the end of each day for reflection on what could have gone better.

It starts with a willingness to question everything. You have to look critically at current practices and “the way we do things here” with an eye toward improvement if you are going to move forward. The great danger lies in the assumption that things are fine just the way they are. No matter how good something is, be it a process, a product, a practice, a standard, an attitude, or absolutely anything else—it can always be better.

Many people are familiar with the Japanese concept of kaizen, meaning small improvements and changes on a regular basis. A concept I heard years ago in association with Toyota was “permanent dissatisfaction.” While that might have a negative connotation at first, it really is at the core of having a positive attitude about change and always getting better. Never be satisfied or complacent about the way things are. Always look to improve the quality of every aspect of what you do.

Jazz musician Wynton Marsalis put it this way: “If you don't feel any tension in what you're doing, then you're not serious about it. You have to be able to create new things to be successful, and the new things come from constantly questioning what you're already doing.”

Without a Process It's Just a Slogan

It's easy to fall into the trap of confusing talking about always getting better with the actual reality of doing the things that will actually create improvements. I have seen countless meetings in which continuous improvement was talked about as if it were at the core of the organization's values. After the meeting everyone went back to work and did things the way they had always done them.

Without a process for change, it's just a slogan.

You Have to Get Specific

I took my daughter to the doctor to see about some minor but persistent ailment she was experiencing. At the check-in window there was a poster that I couldn't help but notice.

“We are dedicated to continuous improvement. We are dedicated to 100 percent of our patients having an excellent experience 100 percent of the time. 97 percent of our patients say they would recommend us and we want that to continue (and improve).

Right now we are working on:

• Expanding your ability to contact us after hours.
• Informing you when your appointment is delayed.
• Improving billing and insurance assistance.
• Simplifying the process of referring you to a specialist.

Let us know how we're doing either in person or on our website. We need your feedback and input if we're going to get better. More improvements are on the way.”

Of course, if printing up the sign were as far as things had gotten, then they would have been stuck in slogan mode. I asked the woman at the front desk about the initiatives on the sign, and she immediately began to tell me, with enthusiasm, about some of the steps they were taking to make the improvements real. She further told me that they had committed to having everyone on the staff always be on the lookout for anything they did that could be improved. These areas for improvement were then taken to the next step, which is process and action. Without a process for change, continuous improvement is just a slogan.

That's the way it's done. You don't have a staff meeting and say “let's always get better at everything we do” then adjourn the meeting and go back to what you've always done. You get specific about what improvements and changes to make; you assign responsibility, accountability, and the authority to take necessary actions; you allocate a budget if necessary; you create a schedule for completion; and you move forward until it's done.

Then you acknowledge that you're never really done, because what you just improved can be made better, and there's always other things to improve, as well.

You have to be going through a neverending cycle of:

• Now: our present condition
• Next: the desired state
• New: how to reach that state

The critical part is “how to reach that state.” Taking action is the only thing that gives value to your ideas about improvement.

If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing Wrong

G. K. Chesterton, in his book What's Wrong with the World, said: “If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly.” My friend Arnie Malham changed it to wording that I like better when he said, “If it's worth doing, it's worth doing wrong.”

What in the world does that mean? It means that you should take action even if you know you're not going to do it perfectly. It means that you move forward even if you know you'll only get to 50 percent of the solution. It means that doing something in the interest of getting better beats doing nothing, because we live in a world where doing nothing means certain defeat.

All Sorts of Things Occur

W. H. Murray was a Scottish mountaineer and writer. Near the beginning of his 1951 book The Scottish Himalayan Expedition is a passage that captures the power of taking action:

…(B)ut when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money—booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

It Can Always Be Better

Years ago I gave a speech at the National Speakers Association's annual convention. It was a keynote speech in front of about 2,000 of my professional colleagues and friends, almost all of whom are in the same business as me. For the most part, they are all very good at what they do, and some of them are intimidatingly good. This was my audience.

I had prepared for this speech for well over a year and had put more effort and intention into it than any speech I'd ever delivered in my life. We've all experienced the feeling of being at the right place at the right time, and that's what happened to me that morning. The speech worked beyond what I had expected or even hoped for, and I was ecstatic.

My mind is wired for constant improvement. I know it is because I wired it that way. It was the most natural thing in the world for me to review that very successful speech and look for ways that it could have been better. I identified five very specific moments in the speech that I felt could have gone better and been more effective, and I further identified how I would change it to make those improvements real.

This was a one-time-only speech for that one audience, but I still went through the process of how to improve it, because that process empowers me. That process of continuous improvement, or my own version of Toyota's state of “permanent dissatisfaction,” is one of my greatest competitive strengths.

“Always improving my product” is one of the three most important things I do every single day (see the chapter “The Three Things You Must Get Right”). A dedication to continuous improvement is the single most important factor in keeping my business successful for over 30 years in the face of constant, intense, and every talented competition.

Always get better. Be relentless, consistent, and constant about it.