Kaizen (改善) Through Rypple

In the recent Oliver Marks interview, Kaizen (改善) Through Rypple, Daniel Debow discusses how social software like Rypple reinforces Lean, Kaizen principles.

Lean as a philosophy of managing basically says reduce waste, and anything that doesn’t add value.  Get rid of inventory and do things in small batches because it helps people learn and continuously get better.

Rypple was built for managers who want to do just that.

Under Lean philosophy, the expenditure of resources for any goal other than creation of value for the end customer is wasteful. Having the productivity of teams grind to a halt “while people write essays about each other”, exemplifies this type of waste in the HR process.

In a real-time world there is no reason for people not to get real-time feedback.

Rypple can help lean teams improve. “This isn’t performance management, this is performance acceleration”.  Doing away with the traditional performance review and instead giving small bites of real-time feedback allows teams to learn faster and be more efficient. Having a greater emphasis on continuous improvement, and iterative agile learning, are the types of skills required for progressive lean teams to excel.