Doing better

The Japanese are very particular about improvement. They go on to say ‘this is perfect – so now let us make it better’. This is perhaps the single most significant difference between western industrial thinking and the Japanese industrial thinking. The result is the Japanese habit of continuous improvement, of improving things even where there are no faults at all. Michael Allsopp, in Management in the Professions, asserts that the reputation and prosperity of a firm will largely be the sum of the quality of its principals and staff. Allsopp quotes Machiavelli as saying that the first impression that one gets of a ruler and his brains is from seeing the men he has around him. Indeed, the three pillars on which business success rests are people, performance and profits – the three Ps. People always come first – performance and profits follow. We need to accept the fact that the level of performance we aim at is not at all times attained. However, Peter Drucker, in Management, Tasks and Responsibilities, emphasises that “what performance has no room for are: complacency and low standards”.