Can you improve the quality of what you do by 1% tomorrow?

No matter what your job is, ask yourself this question: Am I able to improve my performance by 1% between today and tomorrow?
For example, if you usually make 100 calls a day to potential customers, can you make 101?
Or, if you study 100 pages a day, can you study 101?
Or give a presentation that’s 1% better, write an article that’s 1% better—in short, improve the QUALITY of everything you do by 1%?
It doesn’t seem too hard, does it? And the next day, improve on your previous performance by another 1%—that doesn’t seem unattainable either, does it?

If you agree that the idea itself is realistic, it means you’ve grasped the essence of Total Quality Control, a system to which Japan owes its transformation from a devastated country with its industry and infrastructure in ruins—as it was after World War II—into one of the most powerful and wealthiest nations in the world in an extraordinarily short time. Wouldn’t you be interested in learning more about this system?

The Problem:
Let’s say you borrow $1,000 from someone who tells you the interest rate will be 1% per day. Do you have a rough idea of how much you’d have to pay back after a year? (Check the answer at the end of the article).

Throughout history, all over the world, loan sharks have always made a fortune (whether they’re neighborhood loan sharks or a bank, the situation is the same). There are many reasons, of course, but a very important one is that most people aren’t able to do some basic calculations about interest and don’t realize the huge sums that can be reached (and what kind of trouble they can get into if they borrow money from the wrong places…)
Above all, they don’t realize the power of something that seems small and insignificant but is constant.

The Hidden Power of Small Improvements

This mechanism, if properly understood and applied, can work in our favor: while that one percent is obviously arbitrary (depending on the specific situation, the improvement percentage may be higher, lower, or difficult to measure, etc.), you nevertheless agree with me that any process can be improved in one way or another and that the results will improve accordingly.
The key word here is, of course, “consistent”: often, a major change with spectacular results in the short term can prove to be a disaster in the long run (and, of course, we have no shortage of examples), while a small but permanent improvement is much safer when it comes to the future.

Why Consistency Beats Intensity

In Japan, the country where the Total Quality Control system—which I mentioned earlier and which is closely linked to its economic revival—was developed, there is the word kaizen, which literally means the continuous improvement of something.
This idea of quality improvement is so closely tied to what we know about Japan, and the Japanese talk about it so much, that it’s hard to believe it was actually developed in the 1950s by an American professor, W. Edwards Deming, who is now regarded in Japan as a national hero. (Interestingly, when he proposed this idea in the United States, Deming was considered crazy and ridiculed by American business executives. It was only after the American market was flooded with Japanese products—better and cheaper than American ones—that he was called back with a thousand apologies and a plea for his consulting services…).

Deming and the Japanese Miracle

In any case, Deming’s system, which was designed for large companies like Honda, Toyota, Toshiba, and so on, is not something that can be learned and implemented quickly and easily. It requires total commitment from a company’s management and workforce, and necessitates a series of evaluation and statistical quality control systems that, of course, are not readily available to the average entrepreneur. (Anyone wishing to learn more about the Total Quality Control system can easily find books containing the foundational texts, including Deming’s own works: *Out of the Crisis* and *Quality, Productivity, and Competitive Position*.)

This idea of kaizen strikes me as so extraordinary and useful that I think it’s a shame not to use it ourselves, not only in business but in all areas of life. Setting aside its rigorous application, the basic principle is very simple: it’s about committing to constantly improve, day by day, the quality of what we do, in every aspect of our work. And this isn’t about making grand New Year’s-style promises, which almost always turn out to be unrealistic, impossible to keep, and which, in any case, don’t last more than a few days. I’m talking here about small, concrete improvements—relatively easy to achieve and yet extremely profitable in the long run—with each commitment aimed at the overall improvement of the quality of what we do.

Quality vs Quantity

Attention!!! The example of starting with one percent might suggest that it’s really just a matter of producing a little more each day, but that’s not the case at all. I used that example to make my point, but in fact, Deming’s core philosophy is precisely not to view results from a quantitative perspective, but from a qualitative one. Basically, it’s about shifting from the usual strategy of making more money by increasing sales volume and cutting costs to a strategy of improving product quality through customer satisfaction, reducing errors, optimizing processes, and so on, so that quality is no longer expensive but cheaper, and the long-term gain is much greater.

The Difference Between Growth and Exploitation

I don’t think I need to emphasize how different this approach is from our typical Latin way of seeing things, like “it’ll work out fine anyway” or “let’s make as much as we can today and see what happens tomorrow” or “let’s cheat these customers; we’ll find others anyway.”
And as for what exactly to improve or where to start, the possibilities are endless. The important thing is to realize that you and the business you manage are, in fact, a system; and in a system, any change in one element affects the others. Consequently, any positive change, no matter how small, will have a positive impact on the entire system.

The Compound Effect of Improvement

It could simply be a matter of being more punctual for meetings (remember, improvements should be small, concrete, and consistent), using more precise language, keeping your desk tidier… things like that.
Simple? Of course. And imagine making such a change every day—over the course of a year, how far could you go?

Get to work!

by Bruno

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The answer to the problem:

For those who didn’t have time to calculate, $1,000 at 1% daily interest yields a tidy sum of $37,783 after one year, which you have to pay back (and after two years, it reaches $1,427,587!!!)
So, two conclusions:
a) Be careful how you do the math if you borrow money!
b) Take advantage of this mechanism in a positive way, trying to increase your results by 1% every day!