Employ Kaizen Mindset and Proven Steps to Advance Your Legal Career

Summary

Kaizen is a concept rooted in Japanese culture that has been adapted and implemented in many successful businesses and industries, including the legal field. It is the practice of continuous improvement in which small, incremental changes are made over time in order to achieve a desired outcome. Kaizen is based on the belief that the best way to make improvements is to do so gradually and consistently. This can be applied to a variety of areas in the legal profession, such as increasing productivity and efficiency, streamlining processes, improving customer satisfaction, and developing talent.

When implementing Kaizen in a legal setting, it is important to identify which areas need improvement, set achievable goals, and develop a plan for achieving them. This can include changes to existing processes, creating new ones, introducing technology, and creating incentives for employees. It is also important to regularly review progress and make adjustments as necessary.

The practice of Kaizen can be beneficial to both employers and employees in the legal industry. Employers can benefit from increased productivity, reduced costs, and improved customer satisfaction. Employees can benefit from increased job satisfaction and job security, as well as improved career development opportunities.

Kaizen can be a valuable tool for improving the quality and effectiveness of legal work. It can also be a great way to make sure that the processes and procedures used in the legal field are up-to-date and in line with the latest trends. By engaging in regular Kaizen activities, legal professionals can ensure that they remain competitive in their respective fields and provide the best possible service to their clients.

Questions Answered In This Article

 

What is Kaizen?

Kaizen is a Japanese business philosophy focusing on continual improvement and learning from mistakes to achieve greater efficiency and productivity.
 

Why Should Legal Professionals Always Be Asking “Why”?

Legal professionals should always ask “why” to get to the root cause of every problem and discover solutions.
 

What Are Three Truths That Legal Professionals Should Be Aware Of?

The three truths that legal professionals should be aware of are:

• Some people are far, far less intelligent than you that went to worse law schools than you and have far worse work experience than you who will have far more successful legal careers than you.
• You will have a far more successful legal career than those much smarter, went to better colleges and law schools, and have much better work experience.
• The ability to consistently improve is more important than any other single factor in success.

 

What Is the Importance of Learning from Others?

It is important to learn from others because the experience of multiple individuals in a group is far more telling than just one person's experience. Legal professionals can improve their skills and gain new perspectives by engaging with peers and colleagues.
 

What Should Legal Professionals Do to Be as Effective as Possible?

Legal professionals should strive to be extremely self-critical and continuously improve to be as effective as possible. Legal professionals need to make improvements every day in their professional life to maximize success.

Most people never feel secure because they are always worried that they will lose their job, lose the money they already have, lose their spouse, lose their health, and so on. The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way, that you are increasing the caliber of who you are and that you are valuable to your company, your friends, and your family.
 

• - Anthony Robbins (American Speaker, Peak Performance Expert)

There is no such thing as "security" in the legal profession and no matter how hard you try, or how far you search, you are never going to find it. You simply cannot control what happens to you. It is impossible. Even the highest ranking partners at the best law firms lose their jobs quite frequently. If you possess the best possible academic qualifications and work experience, circumstances might take your job away, too. No matter how careful you are with your career, you have no way to control what happens to you.

What you can control, however, is whether or not you choose to continually improve yourself in your professional life. When you are continually improving yourself you are providing yourself the security that the person you will be tomorrow is better than the one you are today. If you are continually improving yourself, despite what may happen to the legal environments you are working in, you will be in a better position to always stay ahead of things you cannot control. Very few people in their lives practice the habit of continually improving themselves and it is for that reason that so few people become very successful-and stay very successful.

Some years ago, I was on a train ride across Spain when an older gentleman began telling me a story of when he was younger and imprisoned for life in Cuba by Castro. He had been imprisoned, he told me, because he had spoken out against communism. Prior to being imprisoned, this man had been a soccer player and then a professor in a prestigious Cuban university. This man was my soccer coach/Spanish teacher and was leading me and about 25 other students on a summer tour across Spain. His name was Dr. Gomez.

Dr. Gomez is one of the more interesting men I have ever met. Then in his late 60s, he was up by 5:00 am everyday and ran four or five miles every morning. He was always learning how to do new things and finding new ways to enjoy life and better himself.

According to Dr. Gomez, the conditions inside the prison were terrible. Dr. Gomez was put into a small cell no larger than a typical bedroom with over 20 other prisoners. The food was terrible, the cell was very hot and the conditions inside the cell were nearly impossible to live in. The prisoners were let out of their cells a couple of times per week. According to Dr. Gomez, when these prisoners were let out, they concentrated on things like getting retribution against other prisoners who had upset them in the outside world, and getting drugs and other contraband to take inside their cells. Inside their own cells, these men spent their time fighting with one another, smoking and taking drugs smuggled to them by guards and others.

Dr. Gomez said that when he went to prison he knew he was unlikely to ever get out; however, he made a decision to use his time in prison to become a better person. He exercised at least a couple of hours per day and, because his cell was so crowded, he exercised when the other prisoners were sleeping because that was the only time there was room for him to move around. Unlike other prisoners, instead of trading for cigarettes, drugs or weapons, he traded what he had for things like a toothbrush, clean clothes, educational books and a razor to shave with.

Over the course of approximately one year, this man actually grew inside the prison while the other prisoners became much worse off. In fact, during the one year he was in his small cell, many prisoners actually died-or went insane.

Every month, Dr. Gomez was allowed to have a visitor come see him. One Sunday afternoon, Dr. Gomez was sitting with his brother in the prison visiting room with several other visitors and prisoners. Dr. Gomez, unlike the other prisoners, was very fit, well shaven and cleanly dressed. In fact, Dr. Gomez looked in better health than most of the visitors. Sitting in the prison visitor room, Dr. Gomez noticed that a shift change took place during the visit. The guard that was replaced was a new guard and one that Dr. Gomez did not recognize. A few minutes after this, a bell rang announcing that visitor hours were over.

Instead of going back to the prison, Dr. Gomez walked with his brother straight out of the front door of the prison. No one ever suspected Dr. Gomez was a prisoner because he did not look like any of the prisoners. The main reason that Dr. Gomez did not look like any of the other prisoners was because he had continued to improve and become a better person while in prison.

This article discusses the principle of "Kaizen," which, in many circles, has been called the key to Japan's success in many industries. This simple concept can also be the key to your success in the legal profession-and in life. In order to grow in the legal field-whether you are an attorney, paralegal, or legal secretary-you need to continually be improving. On a daily basis, you should be questioning how you are getting things are done and improving the processes and procedures you follow in your work.

A. Kaizen Defined

Kaizen means improvement. Moreover, Kaizen means continual improvement in your personal life, home life, social life, and working life. When applied to the workplace, Kaizen means continual improvement involving everyone.

Kaizen is a tool originally used by Toyota to foster continued improvement within its Toyota Production System. It began as "Quality Circles," a means of factory shop floor employees solving quality issues within a structured team framework, using specific new tools. At Toyota, and other Japanese companies, "Kaizen events" are constantly occurring. In general, a Kaizen event will involve the management appearing at the desk or machine of employees and observing exactly how they do their jobs. The efficiency, processes and procedures followed by the employee are aggressively questioned. How does the employee hold a tool? How many steps does it take to go between different machines where the work may be occurring? Then, as inefficiencies are pointed out, the employee is expected to adapt and change immediately. If the employee does not correct the efficiency, he or she is fired on the spot and another person is brought in to do the job. When a Kaizen event occurs, the President of Toyota might even follow around a janitor for days to figure out the inefficiencies. This approach to work is something that occurs at all levels of the organization and involves everyone.

While this approach to managing a company is draconian, it ensures that the work being performed is done in the best possible manner with the least amount of waste. While he did not call it "Kaizen," this method of approaching work was also the building block behind most of the companies started by Howard Hughes (many of which are growing multi-billion companies today). For example, companies like DirecTV are products of this continuous drive for improvement and were founded by disciples of Hughes, decades after his death, in a corporate environment that promotes constant improvement and innovation.

The point of a Kaizen event and Kaizen generally, is that the norm must constantly be questioned in order to ensure that the work is performed in the best possible manner. I was reminded of this principal while reading an old Motor Trend which discussed the fact the engineers who designed the Lexis LS400 decided to halve the space between metal fittings in the car in the year 2001. While this was completely unnecessary (the car is consistently ranked as one of the top 10 cars in the world in terms of quality), the engineers did this because it was an improvement that they believed they were capable of making.

B. Nine Lessons Kaizen Teaches and Their Application to Your Legal Career

Kaizen refers to individual, continuous improvement in personal life, home life, social life and working life. Everybody deserves to and should be willing to improve himself/herself for the better. An old Japanese proverb says, "If a man has not been seen for three days, his friends should take a good look at him to see what changes have befallen him." This describes just how natural Kaizen is.

While Kaizen may seem insignificant, I can assure you that following this principal is something that will be rewarded in your legal career. The principal of Kaizen can apply to both your personal legal career and the organization you work for. You should constantly be questioning everything about your work methods-and your level of understanding of various events at work.

Not a day should go by without some kind of improvement being made somewhere. I have provided some career tips based on Kaizen below that should give you some ideas both about what Kaizen philosophy is and how you can implement Kaizen in your legal career:
 

1. You should discard conventional fixed ideas. For example, you may have a fixed idea of the way you should seek out assignments in your law firm, the type of work you should be doing or even the sort of law firm you belong in.
   
   Relying on convention is something that is quite dangerous. This convention can serve to limit you. Part of continuously improving is questioning everything around you. Question the norm. Is there a better way that you could be doing your work? Do you think you might perform at a higher level in another type of legal environment? Do not limit yourself with beliefs about your potential-or what other people tell you your potential is.
    
2. You should think of how to do something, not why it cannot be done. It is axiomatic that you can do more by believing you can do more.
   
   As a legal recruiter, one of the more consistent complaints I hear from hiring partners and other hiring authorities about people they are planning on replacing is that the person they want to replace finds excuses for not getting work done. There are very few assignments in a legal environment that can be brushed aside and not get done. You need to remember that as a legal professional you are being hired to do a job and get results. Stating that you do not believe you can do a certain type of work is one of the worst messages you can send an employer.
   
   Another derivative of this idea is that you should always be focusing on the best possible result you want in your career and thinking of how you can achieve that result. Looking for reasons to succeed in something is much more useful than looking for reasons to avoid it. Winners look for reasons to succeed and losers look for reasons to fail.
    
3. You should not make excuses; instead, question current practices. There are plenty of reasons that certain goals you may set for yourself may not be achieved in a timely manner. There are also going to be reasons why something you do does not work out as you had hoped it would in your career. You never should make excuses for your failure to achieve something. Instead, question your methodologies that led to things not working out.
   
   One of the most persistent problems that attorneys have in their work environment is related to how well they get along with the people they work with. The majority of problems attorneys have in their work environments are traceable to this and this alone. You should never blame others for your problems. Question how you will deal with these and other problems the next time.
    
4. You should not seek absolute perfection. Take action right away even if you can only achieve a part of your goal. While you should be aiming for perfection, simply stated, perfection is not always possible. Taking actions to ensure that you do your best is vitally important to your success. It is better to make an effort at doing something than not doing anything at all.
   
   Many attorneys put off various tasks because they do not feel they are ready to do something. In order to grow, you need to take action. Ensure that you are consistently taking action and learn from the mistakes you may make when taking action.
    
5. If a mistake is made, correct it right away. Mistakes happen. What is most important is realizing that you need to correct mistakes rather than allowing them to continue. You should always be asking yourself why something did not work out instead of dwelling on a mistake.
   
   There is a very strong tendency in the legal profession to not admit mistakes and hence to not correct these mistakes. A large portion of the work of a legal professional is simply correcting his/her own mistakes-again and again-in order to get things as close to perfect as possible. The act of correcting a mistake will make you more aware of the mistake and help you to avoid it the next time around.
    
6. You should ask "WHY?" and seek root causes. If you believe that there is any need for improvement, either in your organization or in how you are doing your job, you need to ask yourself "WHY" and search for the reasons you need improvement and how to effectuate that improvement.
   
   You always need to question the need for improvement. You should constantly be asking "WHY" in order to get to the root cause of every problem.
    
7. You should seek the wisdom of multiple people rather than the knowledge of one. None of us can possibly know the solutions to every issue we face. It is better that we all operate as a contiguous group-learning and growing from each other-than as islands.
   
   The work that legal professionals do is certainly competitive. Due to that fact, many legal professionals are afraid to ask for assistance from others. The fact of the matter is, your superiors and equals in your work all have had many similar experiences at various points in their careers. You can learn a lot from others. The experience of multiple individuals in a group is far more telling than the experience of only one.

C. Some Final Thoughts About Kaizen

If you have been in the legal field even a short period of time, I am sure that looking around your office you can quickly spot numerous individuals who (for whatever reason) simply fail to improve. Similarly, looking around your office I am sure that you can spot a few rare individuals who (for whatever reason) are continually improving.

There are three truths that you should always be aware of:
 

• First, there are people who are (a) far, far less intelligent than you that (b) went to worse law schools than you and (c) have far worse work experience than you who are going to have far more successful legal careers than you.;
• Second, you are going to have a far more successful legal career than thousands of people that are (a) much smarter than you, (b) went to better colleges and law schools, (c) have much better work experience than you; and
• Third, the reason you will do better than some and some will do better than you has more to do with the ability to consistently improve than any other single factor.

I am constantly astonished by meeting attorneys who succeed over others who-one would certainly think from outward appearances-should be doing better than them. Not a day should go without some kind of improvement being made somewhere in your professional life.

As an attorney, especially, in order to be as effective as possible you need to be extremely self-critical at all times in order to grow. It is a well known fact that many people you work with will, at some point in their careers, simply stop improving. The person who stops improving and growing will likely no longer advance in his or her career. If you are able to continually improve in your work, you will advance.