Small Kaizen in Blogging

O.k., it is a bit obscure, but here is a great post from the Google Analytics blog on how a fanatic focus on technology may not provide intended results. Rather, a relentless focus on fundamentals is what ultimately wins the game. One excerpt from the post says it all:

"Each time the industry thinks it’s got the elephant in its sights, that five-ton peanut-eater slips away. I think it’s because everyone keeps chasing technology as the solution to pachyderm-sized conversion improvement. If you install the right mix of digital toys, then whamo you’re sure to be the next market leader in your space. Again with the pixie dust. But it just doesn’t work that way. What we’ve learned is that the big wins come from a long series of small wins, accumulated over time. And small wins come from experienced insight and hard work. And it has to be the type of hard work that a company is willing and able to perform. Not pie-in-the-sky goals without any mechanism for implementing."

There are some parallels to Lean here. Big Kaizen events are the norm, yet, last time I checked there still exists an infamous 95% failure rate of lean implementations. Perhaps the fanatic focus on gimmicky tools to get Big Kaizen results is not the first step in a Lean journey? Perhaps building up the skills of all people to make small, incremental improvments is a better start?