Kaizen vs Kaikaku: changing organisations from different scopes.

In the world of Lean, there is a lot of talk about Kaizen, a philosophy that invites us to apply small improvements, with a lot of focus on habits, constancy and discipline. It is like a marathon, where we go step by step over a long distance in a long period of time.

Improving by just 1% per day represents a cumulative growth of 37.78 over the course of a year! Of course, in reality, improvement will not always be linear: in organisations we experience ups and downs and challenges that can affect this progress. However, it gives much food for thought!

But what about those big, important changes? It’s a fact: we know that not everything can be small changes. Sometimes we need more radical and impactful changes. That’s where the concept of Kaikaku comes into play, which refers to those radical, rapid, and revolutionary changes. They’re equivalent to a sprint, where you run at your maximum speed in a short period of time, achieving dramatic results.

Kaizen and Kaikaku: both approaches are complementary, two sides of the same coin, and have their implications. Both involve managing and facilitating change, although with different scopes.

At Kaikaku, change management is closely linked to Change Management, through generating a vision and principles, mitigating risks, planning and execution, managing expectations and impacts, and using Change Management models. Having roles such as Change Managers, change agents, or roles with knowledge of this discipline is crucial. And of course, we also have to facilitate change: generating engagement with people, facilitating the emotional transition, generating psychological safety, working alongside leaders, etc.

Kaizen involves small changes, with the big challenge of developing habits—which is saying something. Creating habits is a challenge for organizations: sustained repetition, getting off autopilot, adopting new beliefs… even though Kaizen involves small improvements, it can be a real challenge for our brains.

If we combine Kaizen and Kaikaku appropriately, we can generate incredible results! Perhaps the biggest challenge is deciding when to pursue one approach or the other, or how to combine the two in a sustainable way.