The-Slight-Edge

invest in Yourself 149
The Japanese took Deming’s Slight Edge teachings about simple little
disciplines in improving quality, compounded them over time, and in less than a
decade they blew the much larger, richer and more powerful industry leader (the
United States) out of the water. So far out of the water, in fact, that the top-selling
car in America for years was the Honda.
It wasn’t that the Americans didn’t improve. The 1983 Chevy was clearly
superior to the 1973 Chevy. But General Motors kept looking for those big
breakthroughs, while the Japanese kept making little, seemingly insignificant
improvements which, compounded over time, enabled them to steal the spotlight
in what was once almost exclusively an American car show. The Japanese had major
automotive breakthroughs, too, but they were the result of their Slight Edge strategy.
In the 1990s, the American auto industry made quite a comeback: great cars,
record sales and profits. It was a stunning turnaround, and what turned it around
were our automakers finally embracing the teachings of W. Edwards Deming: that
a commitment to developing and sticking to a Slight Edge strategy will absolutely,
positively send you to the top.
Plan, do, review (and ready, fire, aim!) creates a structure and support system
for continuously improving. It’s the strategy of constant course correction. You
may have heard the expression, “It’s not how you plan your work, it’s how you
work your plan.” Not quite. A Slight Edge strategy means doing both at once—
one tiny, course-correcting step at a time.
The Slight Edge is the process. You choose which way it goes: up with the
five percent, or down with the other ninety-five percent. You don’t just make that
choice once and then say, “Ahh, I’m finished, now I’m all set.” You make that
choice moment to moment to moment—and keep making it, every month and
every day, for the rest of your life.
Each new moment will present you with a new Slight Edge choice to be made.
Before long it will become natural and automatic, but when you first begin, it will
require your constant awareness.
You have to choose to make the Slight Edge work for you—moment by
moment, one step at a time. Remember the rocket to the moon.
Is it easy to do? Yes. Is it easy not to do? Of course. If you don’t do it, will your
life collapse? No—not today. But that simple error in judgment, compounded
over time, will pull you down the failure curve, absolutely and irrevocably, no
questions asked. Unless you accept the wealthy man’s third gift—the choice—
and keep on accepting it, day by day and moment by moment.
Learning Through Modeling
Earlier I mentioned that there are three principal types of learning. We’ve
examined the first two (learning through study and learning through doing) and