failure and invention are inseparable twins.

Psychological moonshots prove that it’s nearly always cheaper, easier and more effective to invest in perception than reality.

Asking someone to explain the detail and logic underpinning their strongly held beliefs is a profoundly powerful way to reduce their conviction. This works for limiting beliefs too. If someone is struggling with their self-belief and believes they’re worthless, having them explain in as much detail as they can, why they feel that way, and questioni

Team members were empowered to quickly implement ideas for improvement, and anything that worked was replicated as best practice. All team members could also stop the entire line at any time to fix a problem by pulling a cord that was accessible from any location in the factory.

New things put ego, status, jobs and identities at stake.’

Critically, the person who implements the idea has to be the one who had it in the first place. You can imagine how this principle alone alters the types of suggestions people make. A criticism is no longer an idea; ‘I hate the office music’ can’t be a suggestion, as under this principle every idea must be practical, productive and focused on a sol

People want a feeling of progression, and if we aim for perfection, we’ll fail, because perfection is so far away. So instead of perfection, let’s have a little progression, just a little, and that will make us feel good. So, let’s identify the basics, get them right and then next week ask ourselves, what other little things could we do?

Questions, unlike statements, elicit an active response – they make people think.

Under the kaizen philosophy, you need lots of ideas, very often, to make meaningful progress over time. And in order to get lots of ideas, you need people to be driven by their own curiosity, motivation and care.