Plazuno Interview Peter Weiss

1. Could you briefly introduce yourself, your role, and the organization you work with?

My name is Peter Weiss. I’m the founder of MindKaizen and work as a Kaizen mentor and executive coach.

My background is a mix of hands-on operations, general management, business ownership, and many years of helping organizations improve. I founded Kaizen Institute Thailand, bought and later sold a manufacturing company, and have worked with leaders and teams in different industries.

Today my work is focused on helping senior leaders and high achievers stay calm, clear, and effective under pressure. I combine serious Kaizen thinking with leadership coaching and practical inner training, because the quality of improvement depends very much on the quality of attention behind it.

2. What has been your biggest learning in Continuous Improvement over the past year?

My biggest learning is that Masaaki Imai’s message is still far more radical than many people realize. He made it very clear that Continuous Improvement depends first on top management commitment, not on tools, workshops, or improvement teams.
(https://kaizen.com/insights/masaaki-imai-insights-organizational-behavior/)

And yet, this is still the part many organizations neglect. They delegate Kaizen to CI departments, Lean specialists, or middle managers, while senior leaders stay mainly in review meetings, budget discussions, and strategy sessions. Then everyone wonders why the culture does not change.

For me, this confirms something I see again and again: Kaizen starts when leaders change their own behavior. They need to go to genba, understand the real work, support people, and build a system where improvement happens every day. Without that, CI becomes activity. With it, CI becomes the way the organization learns.

3. What professional achievement are you most proud of?

One achievement I’m proud of is the turnaround of a manufacturing company I bought in 2017 and sold 2 years later.

We reduced lead time from 16 weeks to 4 weeks and increased capacity 8 times, with the same factory space and the same number of people. The core of it was not fancy technology. It was Visual Workplace, standardization, daily discipline, and much better flow.

I’m proud of it because it showed something I deeply believe: when people see the work clearly and act together every day, performance can change much faster than most leaders expect.

4. What do you want to improve or focus on in the next 12 months?

My focus for the next 12 months is to make my work easier to access through online programs, mentoring, and practical learning journeys.

I also want to develop a program that can scale without losing the human depth of the work. A train-the-trainer approach could be one path, because real change needs people inside the organization who can carry the practice into daily management, not just attend an external course.

The core topic is the inner capacity behind better decisions: self-observation, emotional stability, clear thinking under pressure, and disciplined action. This is where I see a big gap in traditional leadership and CI training.

I also want to sharpen the connection between Kaizen and personal development. For me, Kaizen applied only to machines, layouts, and processes is incomplete. The person who improves the system is also part of the system.

5. What makes Continuous Improvement personally meaningful to you?

Continuous Improvement is personally meaningful to me because it is deeply respectful when practiced properly.

It says: we don’t need to blame people first. We can study the situation, understand the conditions, and make the work better. That changes the emotional climate in an organization.

I also see Kaizen as a way of life. Small honest steps, repeated with attention, can change a factory, a leadership culture, or a person’s life. That still fascinates me after many years.

6. What is the biggest frustration or inefficiency you see today in the Continuous Improvement ecosystem?

My biggest frustration is the overuse of tools without enough attention to thinking and behavior.

Many companies run 5S, problem-solving, VSM, daily management, or Lean training as separate activities. People learn the format, but they don’t always learn how to observe, reflect, and change their own habits.

Sometimes it reminds me of the story of Giordano Bruno. He challenged the accepted worldview of his time and paid a terrible price for it. In CI, of course, the stakes are very different, but the pattern is familiar: people often defend the old system even when the evidence says it no longer works.

The result is improvement theatre. Boards look good, workshops happen, photos are taken, but the real management system stays the same. CI becomes a project instead of a way of managing.

7. How do you currently find experts, training, or partners in Continuous Improvement?

Mostly through trusted relationships, referrals, LinkedIn, and personal networks built over many years.

There are many people and well-known consulting firms offering CI services. Some are excellent. But many come mainly from a theoretical or training background, with limited experience in the real challenges of leading people, changing behavior, and staying with difficult operational problems long enough.

For serious work, I look less at certificates and more at lived experience. Has the person improved real work? Have they led people through resistance? Have they worked under pressure, with imperfect information, limited resources, and real consequences?

Many people know the language of CI. Fewer have lived through the messy human side of it.

8. In your view, where could a platform like Plazuno add the most value?

A platform like Plazuno could help companies find the right CI support faster, but only if it goes deeper than simple listings.

The real value is trust and fit. Who has real experience? Who understands operations? Who can work with leadership behavior, culture, training, coaching, and the human resistance that always appears when change becomes serious?

This is where Plazuno could help people like me as well. I provide leadership training and mentoring that can make a real difference, but only when the receiver is willing to practice. No consultant, trainer, or platform can do the work for the client. The client must be ready to see differently and act differently.

That brings me back to the story of Giordano Bruno. New thinking is rarely rejected because it has no value. It is often rejected because it disturbs the old system. A good platform could help companies find people who are ready for that kind of honest conversation before they choose a consultant, trainer, or partner.

9. What advice would you give to someone starting in CI, and to professionals who have been active in the field for many years?

Let me be very honest and candid. In my view, the way Continuous Improvement is commonly understood today is often wrong.

When CI comes in with improvement as a prescription, it is no longer Kaizen as I understand it. Kaizen is not about experts giving answers to people. It is about helping people see, think, experiment, and learn.

So I believe the CI profession should be much closer to coaching and mentoring. Our role is to help people step out of their comfort zone, learn structured ways to run experiments, and develop the courage to learn from mistakes.

For someone starting in CI, my advice is: go and see, but don’t go as the expert too quickly. Observe the work. Listen to the people. Understand the conditions before you touch the tools.

Learn PDSA deeply, especially the P, S, and A. Planning is where we clarify our thinking. Study is where we learn from reality. Act is where we adjust the system and our assumptions. Many people rush to Do, but the real learning often happens around it.

For experienced CI professionals, my advice is to become facilitators of learning again. The longer we work in this field, the easier it becomes to give answers too quickly. Real Kaizen starts when we help people discover better answers themselves.