📷So much can be learned over a Cup of Coffee Wait! Just One Minute! Let "Step One"​ Finish First! Published on April 8, 2019 Martin Ulrich CSSBB Founder, Strategic Kaizen Initiative LLC. MAGA6 articles So, over yet another cup of coffee, and by the way it's fresh! I would like to put my 2 cents in again. It seems, that in a world where speed and instant gratification reign sovereign, the appeal for a well fertilized, nurtured and engaged organizational culture has been passed on by. We have all read articles discussing the need for an organizational culture, and we have also read or witnessed a lack of managerial engagement. Why? Well, these two issues seem to be the subject of many "White Papers", Articles, Posts etc. when "change" or "sustainability of changes" are discussed. Data has shown that greater than 75% of the organizations who have improvement activities are stagnating or declining in progress. The two highest root causes, as determined by research, is a lack of an improvement cultural and minimum managerial engagement. Background: In Lean Six Sigma, the purpose for the different colored belts is to represent a similar level of expertise in Martial arts training. It starts off with the White-belt which requires them to understand the basics and the terminologies associated with their field of training. This understanding of the basic language allows them to better appreciate the requirements of the next level, and allows them the opportunity to ask questions, since they are all speaking the same language. Current State: The intoxication of instant results, and the need to quickly improve (something) to show progress for that next quarterly meeting have enticed many organisations to by-pass the "White-belt" and "Yellow-belt" training. Hell some training organizations don't even offer them. They needed a Tactical approach, and was willing to pay for it, Green-belts, Black-belts. But this approach left only a few trained, and even fewer, willing to share. The Enterprise-wide language did not materialize. Let me give you an example of the power of language. 📷 The tower of Babel is a Biblical story of a society of people who shared a common culture and language, and began building a tower to the heavens. Everyone worked diligently and with a common goal. 📷 But God removed their common language preventing anymore progress on the original goal. The power of language can build a culture, and the lack of one destroys it. Not investing in the time to adequately train "everyone" from CEO to Janitor bypasses the fundamental training requirements and process. Yes it takes time, and yes it is affordable. I think many of us believe that the training will spread by osmosis or threw peer training. Well it doesn't happen. 📷 Skipping the basics is wrong! Taiichi Ohno, of the Toyota Production System knew that incremental steps in the improvement culture is necessary to establish a solid foundation. Japanese people are taught early in life about the philosophy of Kaizen, which is to "improve daily, a little bit at a time". This structured pace may not be the brilliant display of improvements similar to the Forth of July! but when the show is over, you won't have to clean up the mess and wait for the next show. Your improvements will continue and strengthen daily. 📷 In summary; I totally believe that developing a solid foundation to building an Improvement Culture can only be done step by step. Language is Step One!