In recent years, the idea of Kaizen, striving for a large number of incremental improvements, has taken something of a back seat to the idea of making big one-time breakthroughs through superior innovation and creativity. The trick, then, is not choosing between the one or the other, but learning how to pursue both at once. Here is another area where I believe that reengineering tends to be both de-humanizing and destructive in its thinking. It has embraced the idea of a few Nietzchian supermen who determine all real change and progress. But innovative or creative thinking is something that goes on all the time in a dynamic organization.
Young children paint in bold and daring strokes.
They are able to master two or more languages with little difficulty. After that, however, with exposure to more structure and discipline, and with more peer group pressure, a kind of rot sets in, and most of us grow into artistically stunted adults. It starts with school and it gets a whole lot worse as one enters corporate life. No less a genius than Pablo Picasso paid homage to the creativity that we all begin with. In a similar vein, Albert Einstein was acutely aware of parallels between his thought patterns and those of children.