In this podcast episode, Kimmo Järvinen, Director Operational Excellence at Kaizen Institute, highlights the importance of effective strategy execution and communication within organizations. In an optimistic and inspiring dialog with Hartmut and Mark, he introduces the key concepts of KAIZEN™ and emphasizes the need for balance between strategy, process improvement, and daily operational management. Direct communication between managers and team members is also crucial for success. Implementing structured ways of executing strategies enhances capabilities and competitiveness of companies and leaves them space to act effectively on unexpected events. Kimmo believes that winning is fun, and success not only leads to improved hard facts but also to improved motivation and employee satisfaction.

Key takeaways

• In many companies, days are full of firefighting, and there is a need for balance between strategic top-down management and operational bottom-up management.
• A structured way of executing strategy and improving processes is essential to make companies grow and achieve their strategic objectives. Good processes are delivering good results, such as growth, profitability, and customer satisfaction. A virtuous circle of quality and growth can be created by executing strategic projects more frequently and making more frequent breakthroughs.
• The founder of Kaizen Institute, Masaaki Imai, stresses the importance of management commitment, which is essential for positive transformation. Managers need to commit to structured ways of doing things and invest time in creating a process for systematic execution of strategy and improving processes in order to be capable of adapting to unexpected things and to withstand the next crisis that will come.
• Communication is key in strategy deployment, and visual management is an important element in Kaizen to make the strategy visible to everyone in the organization. Kaizen emphasizes the need for a constant communication of where the company is and where it is aiming to make progress visible.
• Managers need to communicate directly with their next level; breaking corporate objectives down to department objectives and individual objectives is the key to make people accountable for their parts in strategy execution.
• Managers need to be open and willing to step back from firefighting and listen to their employees, customers and other stakeholders to engage them in the communication and be aware of their needs. This way they are much better able to set company targets and deliver value to their stakeholders in a productive manner.

Connect with us:

LinkedIn: 

@Kimmo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimmo-j%C3%A4rvinen-b95a3220/
@Hartmut: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hartmuthuebner/
@Mark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markderbacher/

Email: 

[email protected]
[email protected]   

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