Keyboard Shortcuts as Kaizen

Kaizen focuses on small continuous improvements. Learning keyboard shortcuts is a great way to make small but significant improvements in productivity for those who spend a lot of time working at a computer.

Save Time and Increase Productivity

Using a keyboard shortcut instead of the mouse is much faster. Repeated many times this represents a great boost in productivity. Bruce Tognazzini, the founder of the Apple Human Interface Group and a renowned usability expert about using the keyboard vs. using the mouse is clear on this point:

Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing.
The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.

Because not using the mouse take so much more time than using the keyboard – it should be considered Muda - wasteful

Prevent Repetitive Stress Injury

Carpal tunnel syndrom is a form of repetive stress injury that particularly afflicts computer users (more than 10% complain of carpal tunnel syndrom symptoms). According to a 2007 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, carpal tunnel syndrome was associated with the second longest average time away from work (28 days) among the major disabling diseases and illnesses – it’s an issue you should take seriously both personally and as a business. Learning to use keyboard shortcuts reduces the repetitive stress on your mouse hand. Occupational therapists recommend you use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible as possible in order to avoid repetitive stress injury. As such taking measures to promote the use of keyboard shortcuts can be seen as part of the so called 6th S – Safety of the Toyota Production System 5S framework.

Identify the programs you use the most

Identify the programs you and your team use the most. Remember the pareto principle. You’ll spend 80% of your time just using two or three programs. Focus on learning shortcuts for those programs to start with. Email is a good place to start: the average office worker spends 49 minutes managing emails each day, whilst the stats go up to 4 hours per day for senior managers. Do you spend a lot of time using a specialist application? What about Word and Excel?

Learning the shortcuts

Print and display a nice cheat sheet of shortcuts next to every computer.
Announce and organize an office quiz on shortcuts at the end of the month. The prize will serve as an incentive, whilst the quiz will introduce an element of fun which is important for learning and team bonding. Make this a monthly event – maybe focusing on different software each month. The quiz is also a good way of measuring and monitoring results which is an important part of Kaizen.
Think of other ways to promote the learning of new shortcuts. For example use Tweeter to tweet a shortcut everyday to your team members. You can also display a different shortcut everyday on your intranet homepage…