Kaizen in 2024

I don’t know about you, but I bristle at all the, “New Year, New You” post-holiday admonishments we hear every new year. As if we have to completely reinvent ourselves to make any kind of progress.

Typical new year resolutions set aggressive goals (tripling revenues, more projects, better clients, etc.), then force you to make equally major changes to achieve them.

It may feel like the ‘right thing to do’ as the CEO vision-casting the year ahead from your studio desk in early January. But in my experience, all too often it ends in burnout, frustration, and failure. By February you’re back to old habits, grinding it out, doing what you’ve always done.

I believe you can achieve more each year by focusing on small, continual improvements.

Improve what’s already working and gradually upgrade and phase out the things that aren’t.

The Japanese call this Kaizen, a practice of making continuous, incremental improvements in processes, products, and services. The goal is to enhance efficiency, quality, and overall performance gradually over time.

It’s similar to Apple releasing an update to iOS. They don’t throw out the entire code base and start over, they release patches and updates to fix bugs, add features and plug security vulnerabilities.

Instead of making major changes every January, I keep the word Kaizen at the top of my Notion dashboard and it’s become a guiding principle for the business. Think of all the small improvements you can make each week and implement a daily routine for checking them off your list. It’s easy and it’s attainable.

The Pareto principle can show you where to start.

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, can help you prioritize your efforts for maximum impact. The principle suggests that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

  • 80% of your revenues will come from 20% of your clients.

    • Implement a referral system to access their network to bring in new leads or ask about their next project (ready to start on that guest house?, brand new ADU incentives in '24, etc.) Keep it simple.

  • 80% of your new clients will come from 20% of your marketing.

    • What top-of-funnel activity can you do each day to find new (+ better clients)? One social post a day: maybe a sketch each morning posted to IG?

  • 80% of your challenges are coming from 20% of something in your career or business (i.e. - not enough work or revenue, client X is terrible to work with, collaborator Y takes all my time, boss Z is a micromanager)?

    • Focus your efforts on these critical issues first. Take small steps each day to make the change you’re seeking.

Small changes aren’t nearly as exciting as, “Triple my revenues this year.” But, they can be more impactful because they compound over time. If you invest in ‘average’ index funds, you know this to be true:

 
 

So to get more done in 2024 here’s an 80/20 challenge for you: what's something you're going to apply Kaizen to this year?

If you don’t know where to start, think about all the systems and processes you rely on each day but are repetitive and take time to execute. Formalizing your SOPs, creating branded templates and processes are table stakes for achieving bigger things with less overwhelm and higher profit margins.

Here’s a few examples:

Create presentation templates for client meetings. Do you search through the countless project folders to find a presentation you can cannibalize? I used to do that. Now I use pre-formatted templates when I need to prepare for a presentation. I have one for hardware + fittings, lighting fixtures + devices, interior + exterior material palettes, plumbing fixtures and just last year a new one for interior design + furnishings. The fonts are preset and my branding is there, so I simply paste in images of the relevant products and compose the presentation. I can export it as a PDF and then send it to the client after the meeting for their review and comment. A consistent look across all my documents is a professional deliverable that commands a professional fee.

Do you spend a lot of time answering prospective clients’ questions? Create a simple document that answers the most common questions you know every new client has. Talk about your process, your fee structure, and how long a typical project takes to design. This positions you as the expert, builds trust and allows those who aren’t a good fit to self-identify. Net effect: it reduces hours of back-and-forth answering the same rote questions everyone asks.

There are more of course and a few small improvements made each week will net massive results by the end of the year. If you’d like to shortcut the process, I’ve packaged up and included these documents in my Startup Toolkit, designed exclusively with the needs of design professionals in mind. Field-tested, beautifully designed and curated and on-sale through this Sunday (1/28/2024).

Using AI as Design Tool in My Architecture Practice

I’ve been practicing architecture for almost thirty years now and although my design process has evolved over that time, it’s one I’m wholly comfortable with. It’s efficient, it’s safe, and I know following it will yield good work. I’ve noticed too that it can produce similar-looking results as I return to familiar forms, plan layouts and details that have worked in the past. And this is a perfect use case for generative AI design tools - like Midjourney - to help break the frame and help me quickly explore options I may not have previously considered.

“Copying others is a good way to start a career. Copying yourself is a disappointing way to end one.” - Kevin Kelly

Using Midjourney, is strangely addictive. You enter a prompt and watch as four hyper-realistic images ‘hatch’ before you, resolving like an old Polaroid photo as the algorithm compiles the pixels. It feels a lot like gambling. Each prompt promises a new chance to get lucky. The results are captivating images of seemingly perfect buildings and it’s easy to mistake them for finished work which they’re not. Accepting these first results would deny the true power of Midjourney as a tool for ideation. Remixing, upscaling and blending images recaptures the autonomy of the designer to shape the outcome and preserves the capabilities of Midjourney to quickly deliver many iterations of the same idea.

Watch the video to see how I’ve been experimenting with it in my practice.

Heading to MidJourney without an idea or a concept guiding your efforts means you’ll likely spend a lot of time creating seductive images of buildings that have no place in a design process. Images without substance. For me, the design process starts with a sketch and an idea. I head to Midjourney to solve a problem I had before heading to Midjourney which is quite different than using it to cycle through an averaging of the imagery that the algorithm has ingested.

Midjourney is a text-to-image generative AI app that uses Discord as the prompt interface and creates a four panel image spread based on a text prompt. Entering something simple like: “iron lace by Tadao Ando ––ar 16:9” produces this image:

A short prompt like this allows Midjourney the freedom to be inventive. It recognizes Ando is an architect and produces a building with his characteristic elemental form language. Importantly, the algorithm has ingested many photographs of his work which tend to be dramatic, sweeping one or two point perspective views with water features and concrete and you’re receiving an average slice of the hybrid of those and the ‘iron lace’ images it’s been trained on. The ––ar 16:9 is an aspect ratio modifier that delivers a wide angle view.

To wrest more control from the AI, you may be inclined to create longer, more precise prompts which, in my experience, can produce mixed results. The recipe below balances precision with room for Midjourney to be creative.

Prompt Recipe:

Once you get beyond the clunky Discord interface used to create the images. The key to unlocking Midjourney as a creative assistant lies in controlling the output through specific prompt language. Words closer to the beginning of the prompt will have more weight in the final result and you’ll want a basic understanding of the parameters before getting too far, Midjourney keeps an updated parameter list here. Now, on to the prompt recipe:

Trying to recreate someone else’s visual style in Midjourney is less interesting to me than the process of experimenting with the tool to produce the kind of image that’s useful to my design process. For example, I’m more interested in creating building forms that don’t look anything like their antecedents. I often force Midjourney to produce buildings without common attributes, like windows or doors, by using the modifier “no” (––no windows ––no doors). I find the results more interesting and useful to me.

Aberrations

What I love about using generative AI for ideation is that it introduces error and randomness into an intentional, too-highly controlled process. It’s similar to analog processes like model-making or sketching, where an error presents an unexpected opportunity. New ideas often come from noticing flaws, where something is strange, misplaced, or missing altogether. Exploring these aberrations can push the design forward. The circled corner of the abstract barn image I created suggested I might consider eroding a heavier base and tucking the work program below the living program vertically separating it rather than the initial idea to separate it horizontally.

Finding a secret sauce of your own making will take some experimentation, just remember that AI is a mirror for your own creativity. Overly constrained thinking will yield similar results. Plying it with interesting prompts it’s become an indispensable office intern who has helped to reinvigorate my design process with fresh ideas and new perspectives.