Drive-By Book Review: One Small Step Can Change Your Life–The Kaizen Way

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been two weeks since our last Drive-By Book Review. But it’s Wednesday, so it’s time for another book. For those who are new to Drive-By Reviews, these are fast and simple reviews of book and only books I can recommend reading are reviewed.

So, away we go. Today’s book is:

One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way

What’s it about? Making big change by taking little steps using an approach called Kaizen.

What makes it different? It’s almost completely contrary to the very Western methods of goal achievement that suggest you define something really big and powerful and strive to shoot for the stars.

For example, in the business classic, Built To Last, the authors identified extraordinary goals they termed “big, hairy, audacious goals” or BHAGs as driving forces in a company’s march to enduring mega-success. The Kaizen Way suggests that setting up goals and benchmarks in this manner triggers an automatic fear response that derails most quests for ahievement.

Instead, the author suggests taking a journey of a thousand steps that are so tiny, yet incremental that the fear of failure response in the brain is effectively shut off.

Do I operate this way? Um…no. I regularly set BHAGs and work like crazy to achieve them and this approach has served me well. But, then I am unusually risk tolerant and I can see the Kaizen way being an effective tool for change for people who tend more toward fear and paralysis.

Who needs to read it? Anyone who’s looking for an approach to change or achievement that is very gentle and pretty much eliminates the fear response.