Kaizen is a synonym for continuous improvement. Although in Japanese (the word’s origin) it simply means improvement (according to Wikipedia, at least), it has grown into an expression meaning the never-ending search for perfection, for continually becoming just a little bit better.
I try to follow a kaizen mentality and some of that flows into this blog, where I analyze and try to find solutions for what I perceive as problems in the world around me. Some days ago, a friend of mine told me something that make a deep impact on me, which was along the lines of:
You don’t need to worry too much about those things, as long as you’re making a profit.
This made an impact because it’s partially true: the stuff I discuss in my blog really is a bunch of first world problems. But I also think it misses the point: the goal is not entirely to make profit but to keep getting better: like race car drivers, the objective is to try to make a better time and see how fast you can possibly go.
In my job as an engineer, my goal is to create the best system I can, so my company can profit from that. This is why I see working in a Continuous Delivery process as mandatory: it lends itself to constant tuning, and you keep trying to find ways to deliver faster and faster.
The same applies to my Japanese: I get a small jolt of happiness every time I realize I can handle a little more of the language, and that drives me to get even better. I don’t even know what return I’ll get from Japanese yet but the journey, by itself, is a reward already.
In kaizen, just good enough is not good enough.
