I am always curious to learn how great companies keep excelling. This combined with my fascination for Japan and cars, this book was an instant standout when I saw it at my local library.
After reading the first few chapters, I felt a deep satisfaction that I am reading this book at the beginning of my career as I am now aware how important the focus of long-term leadership development is.
The underlying message I learned is that employees are the most valuable asset and developing them over the long term is essential. Progress should be measured over a long horizon.
A fascinating insight was the management by objectives and how strategies are created to align with the true north vision.
Toyota Way True North Values:
- Spirit of challenge
- Kaizen
- Genchi genbatsu (go and see too deeply understand)
- Teamwork
- Respect
The TPS (Toyota Production System) and JIT (Just in Time) approach to the manufacturing mean any flaws in the system are quick to rise up and are addressed quickly. This improves the overall process iteratively rather than deal with one big expensive problem masked by a large inventory.
Lean starts with lean leadership there is no way around this. The commitment to excellence starts with training the leaders.
4 levels of leadership development
(1) Commit to self-development
(2) Coach and develop others
(3) Support daily kaizen
(4) Create vision and align goals
Leadership is not just attained from these values as there is a key focus on trust and self-development through “shu ha ri” which is apprentice training in pursuit of mastery. This long-term training contributes to leaders helping to create more leaders, not followers.
The key lessons I learned were the importance of mindset and culture are more important than outright skills. Long term thinking and continous improvement go hand in hand with a focus on the process as there are no quick fixes.