When a process is not working, the instinct in most organizations is to add something: new software, an additional approval layer, a fresh procedure, a task force. Hassan Jameel, Vice Chairman, Saudi Arabia, of Abdul Latif Jameel, learned a different approach during his time working in Toyota’s kaizen division in Japan in 2004.

His supervisor’s instruction was direct: if you want to solve a problem, don’t add to it. Subtract from it. Find the waste — “muda” in Japanese — remove it, and what you are left with is the clearest version of the process. That is the foundation you build from.

The logic runs through how Abdul Latif Jameel Motors approaches operational problems at every level. When a driver at its Madinah Road branch in Jeddah identified that his team’s stock yard lanes were more than 150 meters from the exit gate, the solution required no new investment at all. The waste was distance. The fix was removing it. Lanes were reassigned to a closer position, and what had been a three-to-four-hour daily task became a 15-minute one.

Jameel has described how this principle connects to the broader kaizen framework: “Each individual change might — at least at the time — seem inconsequential. But they all add up. Even the smallest incremental steps, when put together, make a real and meaningful difference.”

The “subtract, don’t add” discipline is harder than it sounds. It requires sitting with a problem long enough to understand what is actually driving it, rather than reaching for a solution that looks decisive. In the Jeddah stock yard, the solution was obvious once someone looked closely enough to see it.