By jove I think he's got it! There are many facites to Toyota and there are a zillion of people out there all trying to find the pulse that is Toyota. Odd isn't for this Giant car manufacturer to not have as its vision to build the worlds best car. Vehicle if you will. Instead it has, as quoted here, To be contributive to the development and welfare of the country by working together, regardless of position, in faithfully fulfilling our duties. Hello where's the car gone? You had better read 2-3-4-5 of Stewarts paper. The secret is in there.
In essence the secret is to employ managers that manage, they don't need to be subject matter experts except in managing people!
Too often we employ managers with so called high IQ say 140. They in turn manage a group of people with low IQ say 60 for this is how some managers treat their people. Take 10 team members. Total IQ in the team, not including the captain equals 600. This example shows that clearly there is far more processing power within the team than the manager has at his command. It would be prudent would it not to consult with the team on kaizen than rely on the managers contribution only?
Once again this paper supports the arguement that without a vision you are doomed anyway.
You have plucked my heart strings Stewart. Nice.
Rob Langdon
Quality Manager
Biomedical Technology Services
Brisbane
Queensland
Australia

Thank you for the article about Toyota's culture of continuous improvement. My own work has been centered around the work of quality and organizational improvement for nearly 30 years. In the 1970s and 80s, we worked first from the methods of quality circles. Later, we learned the methods and philosophy of Dr. Deming and applied his ideas to a nationwide organization. We had success and struggle. Lessons learned from unforeseen and unintended consequences of process improvement.

As you wrote, what is the key to Toyota's culture of engagement and collective contribution? Success leaves clues, and we may learn from them. In the early 1990's, Bill brooks became an Assistant Secretary of Labor. Bill had worked for GM for many years, eventually being assigned to the New Universal Motors plant in California - GM's joint venture with Toyota. Bill talked often about the differences in culture that he observed between where he had been, and where he went. He said that in the traditional GM plant, management assumed that they alone had all of the answers for business success. Bill noted that the workers were expected to just come in and do their jobs - nothing more. "We cut their heads off at the factory gate," Bill recalled. At the NUMMI plant, everyone was empowered. This did not mean that management abrogated responsibility to set the vision or overall direction. But it meant that people were given meaningful input into the decisions that affected them.

The heart of the Toyota culture lies, in my view, with the basic assumption that the best way to assure innovation and success into the future, is to draw on the collective wisdom of the entire workforce. Then, the assumption that the best way to elicit the maximum contributions from the most people, is to build relationships of engagement and trust. Only from this foundation can the work of exploring the possible, and building the future, take place. Otherwise, as you note, organizations will have staged kaizen events, or other forms of process improvement, that are owned only by those in charge of the project, and not by all stakeholders.

How then, can others replicate the Toyota style? Perhaps the best explanation I have seen lately is in the recent book "Toyota Kata." Toyota internalized the lessons of Dr. Deming, not only with regard to focus on process and improvement, but especially with regard to the psychology of the workforce. Toyota put its people in the literal center of every P-D-C-A wheel. At each step, "check with the people." This implies a shared understanding of the organization's vision, and an alignment of effort to achieve the common objectives. As Dr. Deming taught, "everyone wins."

How many times have any of us observed improvement initiatives that were imposed, not co-created? Initiatives where the ideas of the few - "outliers" as some call them - were not heard with respect and consideration. On the shop floor, we want to control a process, and narrow the range of variation. But in human interaction, the place where Toyota's culture can come to life, the source of innovation and adaptation into a changing environment, can as easily be in the outlier as in the mainstream.

Whatever our approach to organizational change, whether we use Lean or Kaizen or anything else, perhaps the missing piece that would lead us to a Toyota culture of engagement and contribution, is the human piece that is in each worker.

Thanks for reading along, and I look forward to the thoughts and responses of others.

Bruce

Bruce Waltuck, M.A., Complexity, Chaos, and Creativity
Senior Member, ASQ, and Past Chair of the Government Division
Associate, Plexus Institute
complexified on Twitter

Really liked your article about Toyota's contributive context. As you know, Deming was very concerned that management remove barriers to employee contribution by fostering an environment that facilitated the natural desire in everyone to have a sense of ownership in the mission of the enterprise. The management culture in the U.S., in broad terms, seems to be more concerned with the raison d'etre of the American Corporation: to increase the wealth of the stockholder this quarter or very soon; a paradigm highly resistive to change. The one aspect of your article on which I would like to comment regards your concept of contributive responsibility. The ability to respond depends on employees' true perception that their work context produces real quality and competitive advantage through the exercise of quality of work life, a place that values humans in service to the mission of the organization. From that approach, the ability to respond vigorously becomes a result of context. As I understand Japanese culture, there may be some differences in how they respond to management leadership as opposed to the U.S., wherein individual goals are just as important as those of the group (team). As you say so eloquently, leadership should have expert help to help them go through the transition to a true quality culture. Hopefully, they can get the stockholders on board as well.
JoeDean Williams PhD
Quality Human Systems
Aptos, CA
qualityhumansystems.com