--- name: kaizen-funnel description: "A portfolio-level view of every improvement idea moving toward becoming a scheduled kaizen event — which stage each one is in, which are going stale, and honestly flagging any idea nobody's actually championing yet. Use when: You're running more than one improvement idea at a time and want a real, checkable view of where each one actually stands, not a mental tally. You want to catch an idea that's gone quiet — sitting unscreened or unscheduled far longer than similar ideas — before it becomes a suggestion nobody ever hears back about. You want honest visibility into backlog size and conversion, the difference between a program that actually implements ideas and one that just collects them. Not for: You're tracking a single kaizen event that's already chartered and scheduled — that's the kaizen charter's job, not this one. You're following up on one already-run event's 30/60/90-day results — that's the 30-60-90 tracker, a different artifact from the portfolio view here." --- # Kaizen funnel A portfolio-level view of every improvement idea moving toward becoming a scheduled kaizen event — which stage each one is in, which are going stale, and honestly flagging any idea nobody's actually championing yet. Family: Kaizen events · Format: .xlsx · Domain: core ## What it is A kaizen funnel is the portfolio view sitting above any single event — where every improvement idea actually is, from first captured to fully implemented, and whether it's moving or stuck. Name your own pipeline stages (Captured, Screened, Chartered, Scheduled, Implemented is a common shape, but yours may differ), then list each idea with where it came from, its current stage, and when it got there. Age, funnel counts per stage, and which ideas have gone stale relative to their peers get computed for you — but who's actually championing each idea is never guessed. Every idea starts unassigned until you name a real person. ## When to use it Use it when: - You're running more than one improvement idea at a time and want a real, checkable view of where each one actually stands, not a mental tally. - You want to catch an idea that's gone quiet — sitting unscreened or unscheduled far longer than similar ideas — before it becomes a suggestion nobody ever hears back about. - You want honest visibility into backlog size and conversion, the difference between a program that actually implements ideas and one that just collects them. Not when: - You're tracking a single kaizen event that's already chartered and scheduled — that's the kaizen charter's job, not this one. - You're following up on one already-run event's 30/60/90-day results — that's the 30-60-90 tracker, a different artifact from the portfolio view here. ## How to fill it in - **ideas** — Drafted from each idea's source, current stage, and the date it entered that stage — assign a real champion to each afterward. - **narrative** — Drafted from the stale flags and the funnel shape actually built. ## What good looks like The example below is an outpatient clinic's five-stage intake funnel. One idea — a phone-hold-time complaint from a patient survey — has sat unscreened for 45 days, more than twice its stage's own average, a real "suggestion graveyard" case caught before it mattered more. Three of six ideas still have no named champion, honestly shown rather than padded out. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/kaizen-funnel ## Common mistakes - **Collecting ideas without ever reviewing the backlog for what's gone stale.** — An idea funnel that only grows is a suggestion graveyard, not a pipeline — the whole value of tracking stage and age is catching what's quietly stalled before people stop bothering to submit anything. - **Naming a placeholder champion just to make every idea look assigned.** — An idea with a fake champion is worse than an honestly unassigned one — it hides exactly the gap the coverage check exists to surface. - **Defining ten narrow pipeline stages instead of a handful of real ones.** — Too many stages make the funnel harder to read without adding real information — a stage should represent a genuine decision point, not a status flavor. ## What it connects to Upstream: - **Tiered huddle board** (`tiered-huddle-board`) — A huddle escalation is a real, common source for a new idea entering the funnel, as in the worked example. Downstream: - **Kaizen event charter** (`kaizen-charter`) — An idea reaching the Chartered/Scheduled stage here is exactly where a real event charter begins. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding who's actually the right champion for a given idea - Deciding whether a drafted countermeasure is realistic given real team capacity Analysis — AI helps: - Prioritizing which stale ideas or stage imbalances need attention first, and why - Drafting the narrative from the funnel shape actually built Drudgery — automated: - Computing each idea's age and each stage's average age - Identifying which ideas are stale relative to their peers - Counting how many ideas have a named champion - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Kaizen funnel is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/kaizen-funnel.