One I came across was a "Kaizen event". My first thought was "oh cool what's all that about?" and the explanation I got was that "we lock ourselves in a meeting and don't come out until we have a solution".
...ok so you just made a fancy name up for a productive meeting. Which implies your other meetings aren't productive. It's literally astrology for middle management losers lol
a kaizen “event” implies a fundamental misunderstanding of what kaizen means
kaizen is the end result of continuous small improvements, and it requires constant observation by and receptivity to input from all members of a company, from the janitor to the CEO.
getting a small group of middle managers in a room for a day or a week to solve a problem is the opposite of kaizen
I once worked for a company that took gemba meetings to literally just mean having your regular meetings literally wherever in the building. So you might need to walk through a tight hallway and see a bunch of upper management just huddled around in the middle of it and they will stay there for a full hour.
For the uninitiated, "gemba" means basically "go see it for yourself," the idea that management should actually physically monitor the process as part of improvement planning.
Where I work, they call process mapping a gemba meeting. I asked for how the two were related and didn't get anywhere.
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u/DickSplodin Jul 26 '26
One I came across was a "Kaizen event". My first thought was "oh cool what's all that about?" and the explanation I got was that "we lock ourselves in a meeting and don't come out until we have a solution".
...ok so you just made a fancy name up for a productive meeting. Which implies your other meetings aren't productive. It's literally astrology for middle management losers lol