Key Elements
- Resilience and Adaptability: Highlighting Toyota’s resilience and adaptability in overcoming crises and maintaining market leadership.
- Innovation and Strategic Pivot: Discussing Toyota’s strategic pivot towards electric vehicles and its implications for the automotive industry.
- Family Business Dynamics: Addressing the impact of family business dynamics on corporate decisions and succession planning.
- Misconceptions about Values and Beliefs: Clarifying common misconceptions about values and beliefs and how they impact organizational culture.
- MicroKaizen Method: Promoting the microKaizen method as an effective alternative for achieving continuous improvement.
- Competitive Edge: Illustrating how companies can achieve a competitive edge by adopting unique and innovative practices like those of Toyota.
My evolved Kaizen partner told me (actually he texted me on WhatsApp, it’s too convenient) a couple of weeks ago to take a look at this article (https://thedriven.io/2023/01/30/toyota-faces-disaster-unless-new-ceo-performs-miracle-pivot-to-electric-vehicles/), saying we’re in trouble because even Toyota is falling, and what are we going to do… unless we find a way to turn it to our advantage, we’re done… unless the usual miracle happens.
I went to read it, and darn it, they’re losing ground, big time: they didn’t take the electric path, and now everyone is diving into it. Aiko, the grandson of the founder Toyoda, got stuck with hydrogen, pouring an impressive amount of money into it and snubbing electric…
It reminds me of Nuvera Fuel Cell, not the current one that ended up in Thyssen, but the one from the early 2000s. Industrie De Nora, after the chlorine-soda cells, ventured into hydrogen fuel cells. The project manager was Eng. Tony Toro, now in a respectable position at Enel. A brilliant guy, I liked him a lot when I met him, a High Flyer as they used to say back then, now everyone is obsessed with talents, well, good for them… and Mazzucchi, their ex-CFO, who placidly commented on the sale of Nuvera with an “it costed us a huuuuuge amount of money” in the company courtyard, where the first prototype (still FIAT) of the hydrogen car was… more than twenty years ago, how time flies.
Aiko (curious combination, right? At the head of the Toyota giant is the grandson of Toyoda… and before that, who was there? The cousin of Toyoda… I think to myself, well partner, maybe even the Toyota-kata can’t resist these aspects of the family business, we’ll find a way out, don’t worry) solemnly announces his step back to make way for the young… bah, hydrogen is not so bad, electric (ah yes, very convenient but very expensive, and in the long run, not known how sustainable) is touted as the immediate and possible solution, but those dealing with it know it’s not at all like that… and as my partner comments, fusion could change everything and much sooner than the roadmaps indicated…
The fact is that the unassailable Toyota, which has been paying dividends with monstrous and inhuman precision for 44 years ah ah, now is losing ground… the article says that without a miracle, they are dead, requiescant in pace doomed.
I felt a bit sorry, never had a Toyota, switched to Audi at 30 for eighteen years, then to Volkswagen, god the Passat uber alles, the last was a Golf for another eighteen years… now I go by pedal-assisted bike, didn’t need the car anymore… but well, Toyota, excellent, no complaints, if I hadn’t been married to Volkswagen and now tired of trying with marriages…
A few days later, my partner tells me (no longer WhatsApps me, easier and quicker) eh eh and the miracle has arrived, look at this (https://it.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/le-vendite-globali-di-toyota-sono-aumentate-del-9-in-agosto-stabilendo-un-nuovo-record-grazie-al-miglioramento-dellofferta-93CH-2175948): in nine months (I didn’t even realize that the de profundis was from January of this year) Toyota recovers all lost positions and will probably finish eating Christmas soup first again… electric pivot to be completed in impossible times (so said the article at the beginning of the year) even Chrysler in Iacocca’s time couldn’t do it… well, we won’t need to cling to the family business to explain the Toyota-kata’s failure, better this way, I wouldn’t have liked to do it.
However… However, it’s a very violent and unstoppable slap for all the boasted, loved, and hated pocket multinationals… almost all fall apart on succession, maybe the second generation makes it, maybe the third too, and then the collapse is relentless… oops, so Toyota is not out of danger? No, I don’t think so… after all, is there anyone who can really say they are safe today? The exceptions are rare, very rare, but they do exist. Want to bet there are no exceptions? Of course, there are, but they are rare.
Not content, my partner sends me to study a third article (https://hbr.org/2022/11/what-really-makes-toyotas-production-system-resilient) from none other than HBR, where the author, one of their professors, after shrewdly examining the supply chain management policy regarding microchips and automotive electronics and noting that Toyota quickly shielded itself after the first dreadful wave of COVID, being one of the few in recent times not to have suffered severe setbacks due to a significant shortage of those elements (forget zero stocks and kanban), astonishingly states: the first thing to do is to focus on values and beliefs; this is Toyota’s secret.
Really?! Extraordinary! And maybe he would also know concretely what to do to succeed in what Toyota does?
…without even trying to do as Toyota does, since we know after forty years of attempts that we can’t do it… and as kaizen practitioners, we know even before starting that even if we managed to copy the how, in the best case scenario, we would all end up on par with zero competitive margin…
We have been working on this our whole lives, it’s not an exaggeration, and today we can say that yes, Willy C. Shih, Baker Foundation Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, is completely right.
Moreover: it’s not the first thing to do; it’s the only thing to do.
And we can also say with everyone’s serene peace of mind that Willy C. Shih, Baker Foundation Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, like everyone who talks about VALUES AND BELIEFS, doesn’t know a thing about what values and beliefs are nor how to deal with them, let alone what and how to do to modify them to succeed in what Toyota does.
And us? I mean, us kaizen practitioners devoted to the microKaizen method? Ah well, we can’t claim to know everything about values and beliefs and how to deal with them… but enough, enough to affirm here and turn the consequences into concrete professional practice capable of delivering results that:
- we absolutely make nothing of what they say are values and beliefs
- the methods and practices “recommended” for changing values and beliefs (the so-called “organizational culture”) produce the effect of changing fresh water on stones… pretty to look at while the stones, values, and beliefs remain unchanged over the centuries.
Alternatives? The microKaizen method, what else!
And with Toyota? Are we done? No, my partner, not satisfied with my article, invites me to read another old HBR piece from 2011 but yes, I admit interesting, a big mess exploded, Toyota in the pillory, severe defects of the electronic systems, a fatal accident (https://hbr.org/2011/02/toyotas-recall-crisis-full-of) only to admit that no, Toyota’s electronic components had nothing to do with it, it was a mat poorly positioned by a dealer who had not diligently secured it… millions of dollars spent on a diligent investigation conducted by NASA, millions of dollars lost in revenue, enormous image damage (credibility).
I tell him, hey partner, okay, and then? My partner is not a conspiracist, I know for sure, and he tells me: everyone is against Toyota, they can’t wait for it to make a mistake to shoot it down and try to bury it, and every time Toyota rises stronger than before. Have you seen? Reluctantly, they applauded it in the end for their scientific method… but meanwhile, they were pounded for two years like cutlets.
It seems normal to me, it’s a strong competitor, very strong, normal that they try to cripple it, in love and war everything is fair, right? … and if this isn’t a war, then you tell me what it is… my partner looks at me badly and says, in my opinion, you haven’t understood, Toyota is Kaizen, everyone knows it, saying Kaizen is like saying Toyota… we’ll have everyone against us too…
I admit I hadn’t thought about it… but no, come on, but just imagine… if anything, Toyota itself will wage war on us because we are revealing its greatest industrial secret and teaching others how to do better than Toyota… sure, you have to think of everything, the partner on this is unbeatable.