You hear them being dropped here and there at work, wondering: “what did I just hear?” Unable to repeat, you sit in silence and wait for the workshop or a meeting to end to dive into Google and understand at least one of those words so next time you are not caught by surprise (or Sapuraizu in Japanese).
What is it with Japanese words for non-Japanese people (speaking for myself, if you are Japanese, you are awesome for reading this)? How did the Japanese language and culture manage to get the essence of it all? I’m sure there is not one answer to it. In this series of eight articles, I will attempt to unravel some of my favourite Japanese words and share with you how you and your team can benefit from learning about them.
Mari Kondo, but wait isn’t that a Netflix persona?
Bingo! You are right. Mari in her Netlfix show got us obsessed with tidying up our houses, brought more joy into our lives, and made us obsessively fold everything into miniature boxes we didn’t have, so we had to go and buy them, forgetting that we were meant to tidy up the house in the first place.
to Marie Kondo (v.) The act of decluttering in the style of Japanese organization consultant and TV personality, Marie Kondo. Essentially: if it doesn’t bring you joy, get rid of it.
(source: Urban Dictionary)
Marie Kondo became more than a person. It became a word that describes a technique for bringing joy into your life.
How do you get started in your team?
Try to Marie Kondo your team’s backlog – simply plan a Mari Kondo session in your team’s calendar and go through all the items in the backlog.
I mixed three different techniques and created the How to Bring Joy to Your Team’s Backlog, all steps visualize below. Grab each item on your Team’s Backlog or Product Backlog and clean it up. Make sure you have relevant user data handy or ask your amazing UX people for it.
When you have done that, you can also clean up the following:
- the software or hardware your organization is paying for, but the users (aka employees) are not loving,
- cloud resources that are not in use,
- the physical office that your employees don’t want to use instead of forcing them to go there a few times a week
- look into re-using computers in your organization and help our planet suffer a little less.
How about going one step further and one every season Marie Kondo your digital travel photos, not to mention Marie Kondo your collection of sneakers? I often Marie Kondo my desk or my laptop stickers! Yes, small little things here and there, and they do bring joy in my life or as Marie says, Spark Joy!
To continue learning with me Japanese “words” used in Lean, Agile or our everyday lives. Learn how you can apply them to your team and organisation. I hope you will jump to the following article, where you can read my take on Gemba (Genba) and why you want to make it walk.
