When the NY Times Writes about The Toyota Way You Better Listen
February 21st, 2007 by HalWhile others are writing about Jet Blue's Passenger Bill of Rights I'll continue writing about Toyota. Toyota is in the news…the news everywhere. The NY Times wrote two stories about Toyota last week. I don't generally refer to NY Times articles because the Times makes their news articles unavailable after 7 days except to subscribers and for those people who are willing to pay. However, the NY Times got their stories right and I just had to write about it.
The most interesting thing for me in their articles is that Toyota takes the time to make sure employees learn the Toyota Way. I won't go into the Toyota Way. It's well described in Jeffrey Liker's book, The Toyota Way. What is the Acme Way? Or the Big Auto Way? While you and I might not know, the firms can't afford that their employees don't know.
The Toyota Way is just now being understood as the secret to Toyota's success.The first of the two articles, The 'Toyota Way' Is Translated for a New Generation of Foreign Managers opens with a rather startling example of the company-wide commitment to high performance.
"It does not occupy much space on the office wall, but Latondra Newton calls it the hardest thing for Toyota's new American employees to accept: those colored bar charts against a white bulletin board, in plain view for all to see.
"No, they are not representing the company’s progress toward goals. Rather, they are the work targets of individual workers, visibly charting their successes or failures to meet those targets.
"This is part of the Toyota Way. The idea is not to humiliate, but to alert co-workers and enlist their help in finding solutions."
The Toyota Way is just now being understood as the secret to Toyota's success. For 25 years competitors have focussed on what Toyota does and how they do it rather than on how they think about what they do. USA Today got it right when they reviewed Liker's book; they said,
"Toyota is as much a state of mind as it is a car company."1
The NY Times article provides a glimpse of what lengths Toyota takes to create that state of mind among all employees. It's a glimpse that will enlighten.
- From the dust jacket of The Toyota Way, by Jeffrey Liker [ ⇑ back ]
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