KAIZEN or continuous improvement is not limited to the workplace. It can be done at home. For one, I tried doing 5S good housekeeping on a daily basis, slowly but surely. One thing at a time as I use my stand-up one-hour break from working on my computer to throw away old paper files, broken gadgets, kitchen plasticware and excess clothes or load them into carton boxes until the garbage truck comes, which is every Tuesday and Friday morning.

I found the value of working for one percent improvement a day encouraging. Imagine doing it. In 100 days, you'll be 100-percent done! I discussed this simple approach to webinar participants from a Japanese company attending my Kaizen problem-solving program: 'Have you experienced the power of your company with 3,000 workers with each one making a daily one percent improvement?' They were surprised. They professed to know about Kaizen and yet were unaware of the one percent improvement approach until I gave them many examples, like moving a trash can near the door of a room instead of mindlessly putting it elsewhere. The moment people leave the room, they can easily dump their trash under a clean-as-you-go system.