Kaizen has three service lines which cross-cut nine technical areas. These service lines are “what we do” to realize our Vision. The technical areas are “where we do them” to achieve specific and sustainable development impact.
Kaizen brings a “service line first” approach to project design. By focusing first on tailoring our service lines to the situation and then our technical expertise, we create projects that are the “right-fit” to the situation. This methodology takes into account the complex set of factors that make development projects successful or unsuccessful. By utilizing this methodology, our projects are set up for success from the outset.
Services
Kaizen began providing Organizational Development services to governmental entities in the rebuilding of Iraq in 2004. Since then, Kaizen has provided these services to more than 100 government, NGO and private sector organizations worldwide. Kaizen is recognized as an innovator and an industry leader in government Organizational Development. Kaizen developed an innovative model for dealing with the unique challenges and incentive structures found in a government context, known as the “Organizational Self-Assessment and Transformation Program” (OSTP). The model has been exceptionally effective in empowering organizations to build their own capacity and is one of the most sustainable methods to organizational development in the world. The model has been tailored to a variety of situations to achieve desired outcomes by stakeholder organizations.
In response to the need for better knowledge sharing and peer-to-peer learning frameworks, Kaizen developed a model for Communities of Practice, called Professional Communities (PCs), in 2006. Kaizen has developed a proprietary guide for how to conduct effective PCs, which serves as the framework for creating and administering PCs. Kaizen leads a demand-driven approach to PCs that quickly gains buy-in from members and rapidly responds to the needs and requests of the group. Kaizen’s PCs can be strictly digital, strictly in-person or, most commonly, some combination of the two. Kaizen creates PCs to self-sustain. Kaizen begins with the long-term goal that the PCs will become so critical to their members that they will be maintained well beyond the life of the project. Kaizen’s approach to PCs has been proven time and time again, with many of them continuing today.
Born out of Kaizen’s internal culture of continuous innovation, Kaizen developed two hybrid technology incubator/accelerator programs to address global challenges in food security and conflict resolution. Driven by a commitment to continuous improvement, Kaizen works with innovators and entrepreneurs to maximize the impact of a fledgling organization or initial idea. That impact can be a commercially viable product and/or service or a donor funded project or organization. Kaizen’s successes in addressing global challenges through innovation and entrepreneurship have received significant attention from subject area leaders in food security and conflict mitigation.
Technical Areas
Access to Finance
Through the use of accelerators, Kaizen provides access to finance by facilitating connections between participants and capital providers. Kaizen supports companies through the full funding process. By building companies’ capacity to handle outside funding, Kaizen provides an avenue for innovators and entrepreneurs to reach their growth potential by unlocking capital.
Service Lines: Organizational Development, Innovation and Entrepreneurship
The Kaizen Company implemented the Smart-X project in Israel and the West Bank between September 2014 and September 2016. The project used start-up entrepreneurship as a vehicle to create mutually beneficial cross-border cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis. Kaizen supported the formation and growth of ten jointly-founded Israeli-Palestinian start-up ventures through awareness-raising, matchmaking, networking, and business acceleration activities. The success of these start-up companies has served as a catalyst for reducing the social distance between the two sides and is providing successes that are already forming the basis of communications and outreach campaigns for other entrepreneurs and their communities.
Agriculture
Through Kaizen’s Organizational Development and Innovation & Entrepreneurship service lines, Kaizen provides technical assistance to agriculture technology firms. Kaizen focuses on building the internal systems of agriculture technology firms to achieve their goals and become partners in the fight for food security in challenging agricultural environments.
Service Lines: Organizational Development, Communities of Practice, Innovation and Entrepreneurship
The Kaizen Company is leading a consortium of organizations that comprise the Technical Assistance (TA) Facility for the Securing Water for Food: Grand Challenge for Development (SWFF), which aims to source and accelerate technological and business model innovations that will enable the production of more food with less water and/or make more water available for food production, processing, and distribution. As an incubator for water innovations, Kaizen’s TA Facility is implementing the milestone based funding, providing acceleration services and ensuring financial, contractual, and reporting compliance of all awardees.
The consortium’s multifaceted support includes a flexible service to meet the needs of the awardees by synthesizing expertise and resources from a diverse network of private sector innovation support organizations. The Kaizen Company is supporting awardees of the USAID Global Development Lab's Grand Challenge to realize the full potential of their innovations through needs-based technical assistance, commercialization/scaling advisory services, financial management, monitoring and evaluation assistance, and partnerships/network building.
Economic Growth
Kaizen believes that economic growth is one of the most powerful drivers of development outcomes. This belief drives us to use all three of our service lines to unlock economic growth. As part of its Organizational Development practice area, Kaizen builds the capacity of the government ministries that enable private sector growth and the internal systems of private sector entities to realize their full potential. Through its Communities of Practice service line, Kaizen has worked to bridge the gaps between private sector firms, governments and NGOs so they can work together to achieve economic growth. Through its Innovation & Entrepreneurship service line, Kaizen has enabled small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) to grow and innovate so they can hire more staff and expand production and services.
Service Lines: Organizational Development, Communities of Practice, Innovation and Entrepreneurship
As the prime implementer of the USAID-funded ALROWAD grant program, the Kaizen Company provided technical support to private sector professionals to enhance the competitiveness of the Egyptian business community and create new jobs as the country worked to regain momentum after months of civil unrest due to the Arab Spring. The program supported economic growth by building capacity within businesses and empowering entrepreneurs with the skills to successfully run their businesses. With the support of Kaizen and using the ALROWAD web portal, participating consultants created and led Professional Communities (PC) in their specialty sectors or technical business areas. These networks/communities connected individuals and organizations in different technical and functional areas and with different skill levels, and gave them the opportunity to learn from each other, share best practices, and attract prospective clients. Using these innovative approaches, the program helped build a robust and dynamic business community that contributed to the revitalization and growth of the Egyptian private sector and provided much needed jobs to Egyptians.
Education
Kaizen supports the continuous improvement of educational organizations around the world, including primary schools, vocational training entities, universities, and education non-profit organizations. This technical area utilizes our Communities of Practice, Organizational Development and Innovation and Entrepreneurship services lines to create lasting, positive impact on learners through strengthened educational systems.
Service Lines: Organizational Development, Communities of Practice, Innovation and Entrepreneurship
As the prime implementer of the USAID-funded Human and Institutional Capacity Development (HICD) project in Morocco, the Kaizen Company led a consortium of organizations to provide technical assistance in the area of HICD for educational reform. This project was a 13-month HICD analysis of the Moroccan Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training (MNEVT). Operating out of Rabat, the analysis informs the Ministry’s implementation of their 15-year reform entitled Vision 2030.
Energy and the Environment
Kaizen, a Tetra Tech Company's Energy and Environment practice has a track record of developing and applying innovative approaches in support of projects around the globe. The practice’s portfolio of experience includes leading organizational development and excellence programs in the Iraqi Ministries of Oil and Electricity, building a knowledge-sharing network of public and private entities to apply sustainable energy practices for industry in Jordan, supporting capacity development in climate change adaptation finance in Asia and the Pacific, and organizational strengthening of energy sector institutions in the West Bank.
Service Lines: Organizational Development, Communities of Practice
The Kaizen Company, a subcontractor to AECOM on the USAID-funded Asia Climate Change Adaptation Project Preparation Facility (ADAPT), developed a Community of Practice (CoP) to assist Asian and Pacific governments in accessing available climate change adaptation financing. The CoP was designed to help users prepare specialized adaptation projects enabling them to qualify for financing, receive focused trainings, participate in and benefit from peer-to-peer learning, create and strengthen regional knowledge sharing networks and tools, and facilitate regional networking through virtual events. Kaizen assisted the ADAPT team in producing, managing, and sustaining an implementation plan for the development and launch of the ADAPT CoP, as well as define unique operational processes for future use.
Governance
Kaizen’s Governance technical area focuses on improving service delivery by enabling civil servants to address the problems within their own organizations. Kaizen’s OSTP program is the foundational tool we use to both empower and guide the reform process within government ministries. Kaizen has implemented this process both within and among national, sub-national, and local governments.
Service Lines: Organizational Development
Under the USAID-funded PACE program, Kaizen employed its flagship service, the Organizational Self-Assessment and Transformation Program (OSTP), under branding as the Centers of Excellence (COE) Program, to strengthen the core functions of key ministries and public sector institutions, including leadership, strategic planning, personnel management, and administration. Using the OSTP/COE approach Kaizen focused assistance on reform-minded mid- to senior-level Palestinian officials in the West Bank, giving them the necessary tools to assess, critique, and improve the institutions in which they work. Nearing the conclusion of the project, Kaizen brought the program to its second cycle, laid the groundwork for sustainability of the program on the national level, and established necessary institutions within partner ministries to ensure sustainability on the ministry level.
Health
Kaizen's Health practice area focuses on building the capacity of local health systems and institutions in the public, private, and non-profit sectors, and creating and/or supporting innovative, entrepreneurial approaches to improved health outcomes. We currently work with the U.S. Global Development Lab, Ministries of Health (MoH), Information Communication Technology (ICT) service providers, and local NGOs to strengthen local health systems and make them more responsive, resilient, scalable, and effective.
Service Lines: Organizational Development, Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Kaizen provides technical expertise to the Global Development Lab, where we partner with government institutions, USAID mission staff, the broader donor community, and the private sector. Building upon the assistance provided by the donor community in response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa, we help integrate emergency health infrastructure into cooperating countries’ standard health systems.
To achieve this, our staff help transition hardware and software systems established during the Ebola crisis to national health systems, and develop ICT systems to gather and make available real-time health data. Our team designs interoperable information systems to enable stakeholders to cooperate in generating and sharing disease surveillance data (e.g. case tracking, lab results, and contact tracing). We coordinate complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives to ensure that health system components developed by different stakeholders are connected with the broader health system to avoid information gaps and the need for duplicative data collection and entry. Our field staff in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone play a key role in advising the Global Development Lab in the adaptation of ICT tools into health systems, and help establish partnerships with public, private, and international donor organizations to apply new technology to traditional challenges in the health sector.
Peace and Resilience
Kaizen’s Peace and Resilience technical area focuses on building and empowering local structures that address and mitigate the root causes of security concerns. Security concerns can include land disputes, violence between tribal groups, border security, and low police-presence in rural areas. Kaizen identifies the appropriate actors in designated geographies, incentivizes them to work together to resolve their security concerns, and provides in-kind support. By focusing on resolving security concerns at the local level, root causes of violence and instability are addressed in a lasting and sustainable manner.
Service Lines: Organizational Development
The Kaizen Company is implementing the second phase of the Mitigating Local Disputes in Liberia (MLDL) project, funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). Kaizen is providing in-kind support, and working to build the institutional and human capacity of local government officials and citizens to manage disputes and security concerns by focusing on developing and expanding County Security Councils (CSCs), District Security Councils (DSCs), and Community Forums (CFs). Kaizen is supporting structures at multiple levels in Liberian society to give citizens the ability to bring disputes to authority figures as easily as possible with the aim of preventing minor disputes from becoming large scale conflicts. In this way, the project is working to foster peace by applying alternative dispute resolution and mediation techniques to supplant violence. This builds citizens’ trust and confidence in the government’s ability to fairly and rapidly respond to issues that are (or could become) larger security concerns.
Public Financial Management
Kaizen believes that public financial management is one of the most critical areas of reform that a government can focus on. Born out of Kaizen’s signature Organizational Self-Assessment and Transformation Program, Kaizen has created organizational development solutions to facilitate public financial management reform to strengthen government entities and ultimately improve public service delivery.
Service Lines: Organizational Development
Kaizen, in partnership with Chemonics International, supported institutional capacity building within Iraqi provincial government agencies to directly improve essential service delivery to citizens.
A significant aspect of Kaizen’s organizational development strategy focused on public financial management. Kaizen built upon its work in the central ministries during the previous Tatweer and Tarabot activities to improve public financial management and to push these transformations to the provincial level.