Operational Zen — Look Here, Focus And Improve Together

Kanban (看板) And Kaizen (改善, かいぜん)

Kanban and Kaizen are not just lean methods to manage and improve workflow management across human systems for defining, managing, and improving services that deliver from knowledge work to developmental work cycles to push for modularized productization deliverables. They are to be understood from the essence of their applied philosophy in order to not miss the core strategic crux. First understand why they are termed that way, and we may understand why the industry has missed the moon with the finger that points at it.

Once you understood it, the superset — Life, itself, becomes a fine art of a project, and a project of a fine art.

The beginning of wisdom is the ability to call things by their right names. — Confucius (551 BC to 479 BC)

Kanban (看板)

Kanban (看板) in Han Mandarin and Japanese means “look at the board”. It is a military command to say “everyone, look here. Focus.” Remember how Colonel Everett Dasher Breed was addressing and orchestrating the Dirty Dozen on the board? That’s Kanban.