Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way
Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way
Winner of the Shingo Prize for Research and Professional Publication, 2009 The international bestseller The Toyota Way explained the company’s success by introducing a revolutionary 4P model for organizational excellence-Philosophy, People, Process, and Problem Solving. Now, in Toyota Culture, preeminent Toyota authorities Jeffrey Liker and Michael Hoseus reveal how Toyota selects, develops, and motivates its people to become committed to building high-quality products-and how you can do the same for your company. Toyota Culture examines the “human systems” that Toyota has put in place to instill its founding principles of trust, mutual prosperity, and excellence in its plants, dealerships, and offices around the world. Beginning with a look at the evolution of the Toyota culture and why its people are the heart and soul of the Toyota Way, the authors explain the company’s four-stage process for building and keeping quality people: Attract, Develop, Engage, and Inspire.
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A Great Book,
Jeff Liker has produced another superb book in the Toyota Way series, this time with the help of Michael Hoseus. This volume is an even more Herculean effort at assembling detail than the last were. Every step of the process of recruiting, hiring, training, developing, integrating, and supporting the people who add the value to Toyota products is spelled out. It is amazingly content-rich.
And, once again Liker captures the essential message that what the management of Toyota does is not just a series of techniques, but rather a complex, interacting, systemic way of thinking. The attention to detail, the relentless, never-ending improvement and the ability to adhere to a basic set of values in the face of challenge after challenge is nothing short of extraordinary. Toyota deservedly sits on top of the competitive pile. No one does it better and, as this wonderful volume shows so clearly, it’s damn hard work.
I have stopped wondering if America manufacturers will ‘get it’. They won’t. As much as The Toyota Way was a result of a particular time and a particular culture, our time (now) and our culture (just win, baby) preclude wide acceptance of these methods. Just read the book and imagine almost any of these management methods being adopted by American managers and you will see how wide the gulf truly is. And the unvarnished truth is that that gulf hasn’t narrowed appreciably in the past 40 years.
But as a guide the book is extraordinarily useful. I would think it would be excellent reading for Human Resources professionals and Organizational Change and Organizational Development people.
It is a highly commendable effort and a very good book.
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|Another great Toyota book from Liker,
Toyota Culture is the 5th book in “the Liker Toyota series”. After Toyota Way, Toyota Way Fieldbook, Toyota Product Development and Toyota Talent, you would expect that there is less news to write about Toyota. Well, not true. Toyota Talent is the thickest book in the series with it’s almost 600 pages of Toyota info.
Toyota Culture mainly covers HR practices and related policies. It describes this as “the people value stream”. How does Toyota hire and train people (the detailed training processes are described in Toyota Talent). How do they grow inside the company. How does Toyota work with the local communities.
The book is separated in five parts:
– What is Toyota Culture?
– The Quality People Value Stream
– People Supporting Process
– Organizational Supporting Processes
– Learning from Toyota
The first part is some-of an introduction. It explores what “company culture” means by referring to the work of Ed Schein. Then it introduces “the people value-stream” which the rest of the book is organized around. Part 2 is about the value stream itself while part 3 and 4 are the supporting processes of the people value stream.
Part 2 talks about how Toyota does hiring and how they grow the people within the company. It starts with the hiring and from there onto the training part (which had some duplication with Toyota Talent) and then moved into problem solving, one of the essential parts of the Toyota culture. It ends with how Toyota builds its image and works with the local communities to improve the life of its employees.
The third part starts by looking at the Toyota organizational structure, work teams and the team leader role. From there it moves to safe workplaces and how the standard problem solving is also applied to workplace safety problems. The last 2 chapters are about visual management and servant leadership. How management acts as servants and teachers to the workers, enabling the value-added work.
The fourth part looks at organizational supporting processes and especially HR processes. Toyota still want people to have a job for life, even though this is not common outside Japan. It talks about how Toyota deals with ups and downs in resourcing and moves to HR policies and rewarding policies (an very interesting chapter!). Chapter 15 is a short introduction to Hoshin Kanri.
The last part is about learning from Toyota, the “what can you do” part which many books end with. The first two chapters describes a couple of Toyota Way implementations within Toyota itself, to try to learn from that. The last chapter (probably the best) looks at lean implementations and wonders why they fail. It tries to find general change recommendations to try to learn from Toyota while creating your own company culture.
Parts of the book were extremely good and, at other times, parts of the book were somewhat long and boring. I’d give it 4.5 stars if I had that possibility and decided to go to 5 stars since I felt the last chapter was really very good.
A couple of things that I didn’t like. Most of the book talks about Toyota in the US and seldom talks about the Toyota culture in Japan. It’s obvious the authors are most familiar with the Toyota US situation. Also, most of the book still has a manufacturing focus. There is very little about other functions (e.g. product development) within the book itself. The culture in the different functions is probably similar, but will also have differences. Things like organizational structures and teamwork will be different in the different functions and thats not covered.
All in all, another great Toyota book. Highly recommended for people who are interested in how Toyota works and why. I wouldn’t recommend it as your first Toyota book, I’d probably then start with the Toyota Way book and move to this one after that.
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