FBC – 438 – How Japanese engineers outsmarted top notch Americans professionals

How Japanese engineers outsmarted top notch Americans professionals.

How is it going guys,

I just released a new podcast for you

Play me now 👇

Listen To It On Your Favorite Platform: 

              

Today I want you to hear the story about how Japanese engineers outsmarted their American counterparts.

More importantly, I want you to draw lessons from this story and apply it to your own life.

Applying the principles that you are going to learn in this episode will set you up for success and help you live a more relaxing life

All the details can be found in today's episode

—

Here is one of my favorite quotes:

“So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.”
, Caterina Fake, co-founder Flickr

[Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through my affiliate link.]

Martin Ebongue

Online Entrepreneur & free spirit:

Proud Co-Founder Of The Ninja leads Mastermind

 

Table of Contents

Toggle

Here are some recommended resources:

Money-Making Hacks For Beginners: How Yo Make $250 In ONLY 30 Minutes As Complete Beginner

How To Build Income Streams: Check Out The System That Allowed Me To Build 27 Income Streams

Passive Income: Best System For Beginners To Earn Passive Income Without A List, Social Media Or Ads.

 

 

🔥Subscribe to my Podcast🔥

Listen To It On Your Favorite Platform:

                

 

Your Podcast Host

International Speaker | Podcaster | Free Spirit

Freedom Is A Choice: So choose wisely...

Welcome to the Freedom By Choice Podcast with your one and only hoste Martin. This podcast is reserved for freedom aficionados and entrepreneurs looking to create the lifestyle of their dreams.

In this podcast you will find all the support and answers you need to start, grow and scale a business that gives you the freedom you deserve.

I have compressed years of trials and errors, into easy to consume episodes, to take you from where you are now, to where you want to be.

So I've read in a in a book I don't remember which brand it was. It may have been General Motors or something like Toyota. It may have been Toyota. I don't know.

So there was a Japanese division of the car manufacturer and it was an American equivalent with different ways of functioning and different organizations and stuff, they were both producing cars.

And so the Japanese seemed to be a lot more efficient than the guys in the US. And so they sent some guys from the US to Japan to kind of like understand how they weren't that productive and stuff. And then they brought some dude from Japan to actually look at, you know, what the Americans were doing.

They realized that one of the machines that was working on the doors, had a problem, and once in a while, every 50 days or something, there was a problem. So there was a bump on the door. And the U.S. realized this problem. How do we fix it?

So what they decided to do was they hired the guy whose job was to bang on the door. The guy had a sledgehammer or something. And every time there was this problem there, I think they had to stop the whole line.

He would bang on that door and then afterwards it will restart the whole thing, something like this, you know. But anyway, there was a guy whose job was to bang on those doors and then put them back into production.

It happened like once every, I don't know, maybe it was 50, maybe 100 something. But still, they hired someone to go and fix that. And the Japanese came and they were like, but what is this dude doing?

And the guy said, yeah, well, it's a once in a while we have this problem and we bang on the door and then we fix it and then we put it back in the in production. So that way we don't have to stop the whole thing and we don't lose.

The Japanese were puzzled, they were like, these Americans are crazy. So when they went to Japan, the engineers that went to Japan, the Americans, they went there and they realized that at some point in Japan, they had they had a problem with one of the machines or something.

And it would have required stopping the whole production to actually fix it. So this is the reason why the Americans elected not to actually stop the whole thing and remove the machines and reconfigure them and all that kind of stuff, because it would have halted everything.

Whereas the Japanese, they said, look, you know, there is a problem with the machine. Well, we will just stop production for as long as necessary and we're going to fix that, which they did.

They fixed the actual machine so they didn't have to have this guy banging on doors, you know, and the Japanese were very, very surprised at how the Americans’ thought process was, which was crazy.

How Japanese engineers outsmarted top notch Americans professionals

So that's the first thing I wanted to tell you, is that the Japanese team, they elected to fix the problem once and for all.

And this is something that I see a lot in people and clients. Let's say there's this task that you have to do every single day, every day. It’s the same repetitive stuff that you have to do. And you're doing it over and over and over again. It’s just five minutes. I'll just do it.

So why don't you go to the root cause of the problem? Looking at it differently, just like the Japanese did, why don't you spend time and find a way to automate that so that you won't have to do it again? It will save so much time in the long run. For me it’s about looking at the bigger picture. It will always serve you well for the long term goal of your business.

Constraints Do Not Block Innovation, They Force It

Whenever I had too much time, too much money, or too many options, I did my worst work. It sounds backwards, but it is true. Abundance let me procrastinate dressed up as planning. The projects that actually shipped, the ones that mattered, were almost always born from a hard limit. No budget, a tight deadline, a tool that could only do one thing. The constraint stripped away every option except the one that worked, and that is exactly why it produced results while my open ended dreams collected dust.

Great engineers understand this instinctively. Give them infinite resources and they overbuild. Box them in and they get clever, because cleverness is what a constraint demands. So now when I feel stuck, I do not ask for more, I deliberately take something away. Half the time, half the budget, one channel only. The limit becomes the creative brief. I show how I use forced constraints to move fast on my growth hacking channel and tell those stories on my Freedom by Choice podcast. On doing more with less, the operational research from McKinsey Digital and the workflow ideas on the Zapier blog both back this up. Stop asking for more. Ask for less and watch what happens.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did Japanese engineers outsmart American auto giants?

By focusing on small continuous improvements known as kaizen, while American auto giants chased big breakthrough launches. Thousands of one percent fixes added up to lower defect rates, faster cycles, and lower costs. Solopreneurs can apply the same play by improving one small process each week instead of waiting for a perfect rebuild.

What is kaizen and why does it matter for solopreneurs?

Kaizen is the discipline of constant small improvements. For a solopreneur, this means refining one email subject line, one checkout step, or one onboarding message every week. Over a year that is 52 small wins. Compounded, they outperform a single big redesign because they ship without breaking the working system.

Why do small improvements often beat radical innovation?

Small improvements carry less risk, ship faster, and compound. Radical innovation often introduces new bugs, retraining costs, and audience confusion. For a solopreneur with limited bandwidth, the kaizen path delivers a better risk-adjusted return than a big rewrite that may take 6 months to break even.

How do you start a kaizen routine in a solo business?

Pick one metric per quarter: conversion rate, average order value, or churn. Each Friday, ship one experiment that targets that metric. Log the result. After 12 weeks you have 12 documented experiments and almost always a meaningful improvement on the chosen metric, achieved with no team and no big launch.

Related Reading

• Answer The Public Review
• Ozobot Review
• What Are The Best Analytics Tools For Tracking Growth Hacking Performance Used B
• Copy AI Review