One day, the sensei asked his two students:
“You both, go into the factory and look for what has to be improved. Please, spend the day on the shopfloor and tell me what you find. Is there something we can improve? Something we can do better? I want to hear from you.” And just so, the two students went to the shop floor. At the end of the day, they came back. Surprisingly, there was a big difference in their findings: The first student came back with 15 ideas of what should be done to improve. The second student came back with only one, only one simple plain idea.

What do you think the sensei did?

Some might guess the sensei complained about the student which only presented one idea: “Go back, and find more ideas for improvement! Our shop floor is full of things needing to improve. Use your eyes and ears to find them.”
That’s not what happened.
In fact, the sensei sent back the student who had listed down 15 improvement ideas. He said to him: “If you are telling me that I need to do 15 things to improve, then it tells me you still didn’t understood our process well enough. I can only do one thing at a time. I don’t have the resources, the workforce, or the time to do all 15. Please go back to the factory and tell me the one thing that I should improve.”

That’s one basic idea of any continuous improvement process.

Focus on one topic before moving on.

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