Reflection

 

 I came across an excellent story by Errette Dunn on his blog Ideal Way, telling his own experience with the Toyota belief in Hansei, or "self reflection". The concept is when you make a mistake, you reflect on your own actions and see how you can prevent it from happening again.

In Errette's case, he managed to total a company owned car on his first day on the job in Toyota. Instead of being fired or disciplined, his manager simply took him through the steps for him to "reflect" on what he has done, so he remembers it: a key to prevention.

Hansei is one of the keys to kaizen, it means to acknowledge your own mistake, reflect on how or what you could have done better and to pledge improvements as opposed to punishment. When you do something wrong, it is expected that you will learn some lessons from it, find how to prevent it from reoccurring and most importantly, remember just how bad you felt about it so you never do it again.  For westerners, particularly Americans, who are focused on “accentuating the positive” and “looking on the bright side”, Hansei can seem unduly negative. But in the Kaizen philosophy,  hansei as a critical step in any process.

 Hansei is usually referred to as a reflection done at the end of an activity or project, to find opportunities for improvement. This is partly true. However, Hansei is not only an intelectual exercise of reflection, but an emotional one as well.Not much attention is given to Hansei; not even in Toyota. By this I mean that they don’t usually call it by its name. It’s something they just do naturally. Always. It’s a necessary attitude to ensure kaizen, and a key element for learning from problem solving.