Make your business spark joy using Marie Kondo’s KonMari approach to tidying up

When Marie Kondo released “The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up” in 2011, it soon became a bestseller.

Clearly, the KonMari approach – the notion of removing anything from our homes that doesn’t bring us happiness – resonates.

Kondo is now taking Netflix by storm with her TV show, encouraging more people to get purging. Whether you’ve been swept away by the Japanese tidying guru or not, it’s hard to downplay the strength of her motto: get rid of anything that doesn’t “spark joy”.

So what can businesses learn from the KonMari tidying principles? Thanks to automation, firms can now “remove” processes that don’t bring staff joy. These KonMari-inspired steps can help you take the right approach to “decluttering” your workplace.

Commit to the approach

The first step to the KonMari method is to commit fully. It might feel like a lengthy process, but complete dedication will make the situation better in the long run.

For businesses, that means commitment from everyone. Driven by the leadership team, cultures will need to change to ensure minimal barriers to the approach.

Kondo says that imagining your ideal lifestyle can drive this motivation, which is helpful for businesses. If staff understand the ideal outcomes from automation and what’s expected of them, they will support the cultural shift towards a “more joyful” business.

Follow the plan

The KonMari method relies on tidying by category, not location. For businesses, this means working out what to implement, not where.

All areas of the organisation should get the same level of the “tidying” approach at the same time, with the same tasks automated. Once this is decided, a clear plan needs to be determined, demonstrating how it will be rolled out step-by-step across the whole organisation.

Tidying up

How to decide which tasks to automate? Kondo says that we must look at each item and decide whether it brings us joy. If it doesn’t, we discard it.

In a single organisation, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of business operations that aren’t bringing staff joy. However, just because a process isn’t fun doesn’t mean that it’s not imperative.

For example, while computer security updates and patches might be time-consuming and boring for staff, they are integral to businesses which must keep data secure. And while payroll might seem mundane to the finance team, it needs to happen.

The easiest way to free staff from having to do these business-critical processes while still ensuring that they happen is through automation. Following the example above, implementing a self-patching and self-updating system could bring joy to staff by reducing mundane tasks, but still aligning with business objectives.

Through automation, staff can pursue meaningful activities that allow innovation. That might be developing original ideas, better engaging teams, or winning new business.

Folding and storing

Kondo argues that you should fold and store the items you’re keeping in a way that enables you to see them all at the same time. Businesses should think of the cloud as their easily visible drawer – you have simple and real-time access to data across the business.

The KonMari method dictates a streamlined approach for a happy home environment, but it’s something that businesses should try to achieve as well. Now is the time for businesses to think how they can automate the processes that don’t need staff attention, in order to reap the benefits of a more joyful and engaged workforce.