November 25, 2025
Sustainability is not a label you stick on products. It’s not a communication exercise, nor a mandatory chapter in a report.
Authentic sustainability is a way of doing things.
It’s an ongoing behaviour, a professional and cultural posture that permeates every choice, large or small.
And when we speak of “doing things well”, we’re not talking about perfection.
We’re talking about care, responsibility, and a long-term vision that shapes how a company decides to exist in the world.
And this is exactly where Kaizen offers a precious framework.
The word Kaizen comes from Japanese: Kai (change) + Zen (good).
Literally: change for the better.
It is a managerial philosophy, yes, but above all it is a way of relating to work.
Kaizen does not celebrate exceptionality, but consistency: the small daily step forward, the question renewed every day: “How can we do this a little better?”
Kaizen was born in post-war Japan, reached maturity within Toyota’s culture (Ohno, Liker), and eventually arrived in the West through the work of Masaaki Imai (1986, 1997).
Its principle is simple: quality is not a destination to be reached, but a direction to be maintained.
This vision differs profoundly from the Western idea of “perfect performance”:
Kaizen does not punish mistakes, it observes them.
It does not glorify outcomes, it values the process.
It does not demand revolutions, but constant micro-evolutions.
Sustainability means responsibility.
And responsibility, first of all, means choice.
Every action can be done well or rushed.
Every process can be built with care or with superficiality.
Every supply chain can be made transparent… or left in the fog of intermediaries.
Every communication can be honest… or decorative.
To say that “every choice can be sustainable” is not a simplification.
It is a reminder that it depends on how you do it.
Sustainability means:
• designing durable, not disposable products;
• optimising processes by eliminating waste (lean thinking);
• valuing people, knowledge and time;
• ensuring transparency and consistency;
• adopting a long-term vision, not a quarterly one.
In this sense, Kaizen is the operational paradigm of sustainability: it’s not about reaching a standard, but about constantly evolving toward a better state.
One of Kaizen’s strongest intuitions is that what truly matters is often unseen.
Most quality happens behind the scenes, far from the public eye:
in accurate procedures, progressive improvements, thoughtful decisions, conversations that realign direction.
This is where a literary image comes in, illuminating the concept with extraordinary clarity.
Ernest Hemingway formulated the famous Iceberg Principle.
In good writing, the reader sees only a small part of the story. The rest — the broader, deeper, more solid part — remains submerged, invisible yet essential.
“If a writer knows enough about his subject, he may omit things… and the reader will feel those things as strongly as if the writer had stated them.”
This applies to literature.
But it applies — perhaps even more so — to businesses.
Sustainability is an iceberg: only a small part is visible in products, campaigns, messages.
The truest part lies beneath: the supply chains, the materials, the protocols, working conditions, governance, the choice not to take shortcuts.
Kaizen is the daily work on the submerged part of the iceberg.
On deep, non-apparent quality.
On the substance that sustains the surface.
Here the parallel with Hemingway becomes even stronger.
If sustainability is an iceberg, then we need a way to show the hidden part.
To make understandable what normally remains backstage.
To translate processes, values and decisions into a transparent narrative.
aDoormore was created precisely with this goal:
to open a door through which you can see how a company truly operates.
Not only what it communicates, but what it actually does.
Not only the image, but the process that sustains it.
It is the platform that amplifies the invisible part of the iceberg, making it readable and valuable.
That enables companies who do things well to show how they do them.
That breaks the journey into steps — as Kaizen would — and turns them into story, evidence, relationship.
Kaizen teaches us we don’t need to be perfect — we need to want to improve.
It takes commitment, consistency, vision.
It means doing things well, a little better today than yesterday.
Sustainability is not a goal, but a journey.
And every step, even the smallest, is part of the transformation.
What makes the difference is what cannot be seen:
the submerged part of the iceberg, where quality, coherence and responsibility are born.
Because sustainability is a matter of how things are done.
And the how is always more important than the how much.
Curated by The Marketing Team
