In Episode #67 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast, Mark Graban talks with Matthew E. May, former Toyota advisor and author of the Shingo Prize-winning The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation. Matt's follow-up book, In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing, explores how the most creative breakthroughs often come not from adding more–but from thoughtfully subtracting.
Drawing on his eight years working inside Toyota, Matt explains how the company pursues innovation through simplicity and restraint. He shares how elegance–defined as “unusual simplicity combined with surprising power”–became a guiding principle behind Toyota's continuous improvement mindset. From the minimalist brilliance of the iPhone's missing keyboard to Toyota's stripped-down Scion brand that empowered customer customization, Matt illustrates why leaving something out can be the most creative act of all.
The conversation also introduces the concept of a “stop-doing” list, inspired by Jim Collins, as a counterbalance to our obsession with adding more goals and activities. For both individuals and organizations, subtraction can create the space for creativity, focus, and genuine value.
This episode invites listeners to reconsider innovation itself–not as accumulation, but as artful editing. It's a timeless reflection on Lean thinking, design, and leadership restraint that feels even more relevant today.
Quote Highlights
“Elegance is the combination of unusual simplicity and surprising power.”
“Innovation often begins not by adding, but by asking what we can take away.”
“At Toyota, elegance was something to be pursued and highly valued.”
“A stop-doing list can be more powerful than a to-do list.”
“The iPhone's missing keyboard wasn't a flaw–it was the breakthrough.”
For earlier episodes, visit the main Podcast page, which includes information on how to subscribe.
Video Podcast (in two parts)
YouTube Link to Part One and Part Two
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to the Lean Blog Podcast. Visit our website at www.leanblog.org. Now, here's your host, Mark Graban.
Mark Graban:
Our guest today on the Lean Blog Podcast is Matthew May. Thanks for taking time out to talk today.
Matt May:
Thanks, Mark.
Mark Graban:
I want to talk about your book that's coming out soon, In Pursuit of Elegance. But first, maybe you could introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers and talk about your experiences working with Toyota and how that led to the work you're doing today.
Matt May:
In a nutshell, my name is Matt May, author of two books. One was The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation, which is the Toyota reference that you just gave. This new one is called In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing. The common theme to both is this notion of elegance, where elegance is defined as the combination of unusual simplicity and surprising power.
You asked about Toyota. I did have an eight-year stint with Toyota beginning in 1998 and ending at the end of 2006, which is when my first book, The Elegant Solution, came out. At Toyota, there was a sense that elegance was something to be sought after, pursued, and highly valued. I spent eight years there, and the original assignment was how to translate the kinds of things that were going on in the production world–in terms of constant improvement, constant creativity, and continuous shop-floor innovation–for the knowledge world. How could you get that kind of thinking into the knowledge side of the business? They gave me a three-month research assignment to help them try and figure that out.
I wasn't able to complete it in that timeframe, but nonetheless, it turned into an eight-year partnership in which I was a fully retained external team member–not so much a consultant, but an external team member. I got to design and develop a lot of the signature programs over the course of those eight years. I took a journey from novice to master, as it were, in terms of Kaizen, continuous improvement, and teaching the Toyota Way. In the course of that eight years, I was able to complete that initial assignment.
In the course of doing that, certain things had to happen in my brain, and ways of thinking had to change. That's what led to the authoring of these two books: the notion that elegance is about a stop-doing strategy, a subtractive strategy. If you think about things in the right way and in terms of what can be taken away to achieve greater impact–which leaves you with sometimes incomplete ideas, yet more powerful nonetheless–you can indeed achieve far more with, and for, much less. This, if you think about it, is a tie to your world, which is the Lean world.
Mark Graban:
Sure. In your first book, The Elegant Solution, you talked about examples of this elegance in different products and services. Would you consider an iPhone to be an “elegant” device? Is Apple a proponent of elegance in design?
Matt May:
I think so. If you've seen an iPhone–and they're so ubiquitous right now, who hasn't? It was interesting when Steve Jobs stood in front of the Macworld conference a little over two years ago, in 2007, and demonstrated the iPhone. What really shook the audience was that there was something missing. What was it?
He had removed the one characteristic of every phone in the world, which was a physical keyboard. The audience was shocked by what they saw. How could you possibly completely eliminate a keyboard? Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal personal technology column took Jobs to task for that. But even more interesting to me was the marketing strategy that Apple used for the iPhone.
The iPhone was hailed as the most hyped product ever. I went back and took a look at the marketing that occurred between January and June, which was when the iPhone was available. Nothing. There was no huge advertising campaign, no huge PR campaign, no multi-channel distribution strategy.
You couldn't even get a prototype. Even Walt Mossberg wasn't given one. They leaked nothing until a couple of days before launch when they had a short television commercial. There was no marketing strategy. The consumers filled in that missing piece based on what they saw in that first Macworld conference.
Mark Graban:
Moving from your first book, The Elegant Solution, to the new book, In Pursuit of Elegance, how does the story progress, or how does your new book build upon what was in the first one?
Matt May:
I wanted to look deeper into the notion of elegance, not just in the realm of my world, which was Toyota for eight years, but across domains, be it sports, architecture, business, or television, for example. I was looking for instances where something had been taken away, subtracted, and had greater impact because of it. This book is more of a worldview book. I traveled the planet for a couple of years, all over the world, looking for examples where something had been subtracted and you got greater impact because of it. But not just erased, not just cut out.
For example, look at what you see going on right now because of the economy. You see a lot of companies cutting things out, but what they're cutting out are value-adding things. Elegance is about how you subtract certain things to add more value. Much of that value is added by consumers who act as creators and partners in the process; they're actively involved in what emerges as the product, service, strategy, or performance. So that's the difference.
It's not a business book per se. It's a book for anyone and everyone who is involved in the exchange of ideas every day–and who isn't?
Mark Graban:
I'm glad you emphasized that by subtraction, we're not creating elegant organizations by getting rid of loads of people. You don't mean that sort of subtraction and cost-cutting that's unfortunately a sign of this climate. There really are a lot of great examples in the book. I feel fortunate that I was able to read an advanced manuscript, and I have to say, it was quite a page-turner. I read it over a couple of nights, and it was a really intriguing book. I want to probe a couple of the examples you shared of elegance from these different arenas.
What I found helpful and inspiring about the book was that it made me think–I would read and stop and think about my own examples. I found it a very thought-provoking book in that sense. It's not strictly prescriptive. It's not, “Here are the eight steps to becoming elegant.” It's more complex, but more artful than that. It really is a lot of thought-provoking ideas that you pulled from different areas. Before we talk about some of those examples, could you share a little bit more? We've talked about what you call the “stop doing” philosophy and how that's elegant. I was wondering if you could share some of the origins of that approach.
Matt May:
The origins for me came from a gentleman by the name of Jim Collins, who I'm sure your audience will recognize as a business guru and author of a couple of great books, Built to Last and, most recently, Good to Great. About halfway through my tenure at Toyota, where I was struggling with the original assignment, I read an end-of-the-year USA Today Forum piece that he had written titled, “Next Year, Consider a ‘Stop Doing' List.” It caught me up short because what do we do at the beginning of every year? We set big, hairy stretch goals and things that we're going to accomplish that year, New Year's resolutions. The gist of his message was, “Consider things to not do in the coming year.”
He cited an example that had changed his life, where he had left Stanford as a young MBA and had done what most of us do when we leave MBA school, which is enter a fast-paced career and start climbing the corporate ladder. He was doing that at Hewlett-Packard and went back to visit Stanford. One of his favorite instructors who taught personal creativity in business took him by the scruff of the neck and shook him, saying, “Jim, you might be going down the wrong path here. Let me ask you something. What if you had $20 million free and clear, but you only had 10 years left to live? What would you do? More importantly, what would you not do?”
That truly did what you just said: it made him stop and think about what was most important to him, how he used his time wisely, and the things that mattered most to him. It also became a screen by which he was able to identify companies that he considered to be not just good, but great. That whole notion of getting rid of the bottom 20% of your strategies, goals, and objectives forever, which is what he prescribed, was world-changing for me.
It made me stop and think about the world of Toyota not in terms of what they were doing, but what they weren't doing. It also opened my eyes to the rest of the world in terms of ideas, strategies, and solutions, where sometimes it's better to not rush in and act–because when we do that, we inevitably add things, not all of them value-adding–but to stop and think and possibly stop doing. So that's the genesis of that whole “stop doing” strategy. For the next five years, it became the lens through which I looked at the world.
Mark Graban:
I'm wondering if you could talk about Toyota for a minute. The new generation, third-gen Prius, is coming out. There was some talk from Toyota executives saying that they had started to get a bit bloated in terms of the features they were offering–solar panels to help run cooling systems, the cost had gotten out of hand. But prior to that, you have good examples of a different product where Toyota had applied this stop-doing, this elegant type of design method. If you could talk about that.
Matt May:
Sure. Probably the easiest one to talk about is their newest brand, the Scion brand, which is meant to be their youth brand. Several years ago, they recognized that their customers were growing up and by the year 2020, their customer base was no longer going to be the same. So they had to figure out a way to address that new generation, that Gen Y buyer, as it were. They tried and failed miserably at trying to market the Toyota brand to young folks.
“I don't care if you stick it on my cell phone. I don't care if it's in this magazine or the other. That's still a Toyota. That's what my mom drives, and I'm not going to drive it. You better come up with something different.”
That required Toyota to go back to the ground floor in terms of observing their new customer and getting to know them. The term there is genchi genbutsu, which is to get out there and truly become the customer. Infiltrate them and involve them in the design of the product or service you're trying to deploy. That's what they did. They came out with a very spartan vehicle.
The Scion xB looks like a toaster, a very boxy thing. Not something you and I would probably want to drive. But the important part, and what you're getting to, is that they had left a lot of things out. They didn't have many features, didn't have a lot of bells and whistles. It was a $15,000 vehicle.
What they had discovered in getting out into the marketplace was that this new young generation buyer is all about “me.” They want to personalize things. That's what they allowed this car to become. Not only could you have factory options, but it left open the aftermarket. And that's what the kids did. They spent another 15 grand on the car, customizing it, making it their own, putting in TVs, flat-panel screens, DVD burners, and sound systems like you wouldn't believe, and truly made the vehicle quite successful.
But they had removed not just the options and accessories; they took the Apple iPhone strategy, which was “don't market this.” The young generation doesn't want to be pushed. They want to discover for themselves. So they didn't have a big advertising campaign. They planted the cars at extreme sporting events, urban art shows, and, of all places, raves, and let the young folks discover the vehicle for themselves.
Mark Graban:
That's a very innovative approach. I don't recall any of the Big Three, the Detroit Three, taking creative approaches like that. So perhaps that's a symptom of what's gotten them stuck in some bad times. But as I said, I really enjoyed the book. Maybe we can do another podcast where we can share a couple of other examples of elegance. I like the way you shared examples from different fields and industries. If you're willing to do that, maybe we can do another session. But for now, if you could let the listeners and viewers know when the book is coming out, where they can find it, and more importantly, how they can communicate and find you online.
Matt May:
Absolutely. The book comes out May 19th. It is called In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing. Stories from the art world, from the sports world to the business world to the television world, you name it. It can be found in bookstores and on all the online retailers. I would love to invite everyone to hook into the blog site. The book site is a blog. It's called inpursuitofelegance.com–that's easy to remember. I would love to have people engage in that in the following way: I'd love to hear their ideas of where something has been subtracted. They've realized elegant solutions and ideas not by adding something, but by making something go missing, and get a dialogue going around those kinds of ideas. So thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity to share some of my thoughts on this topic of elegance.
Mark Graban:
Absolutely. Again, I really enjoyed the book. I'm bad about starting a book and not finishing, and this is one that I tore through as quickly as I could. I really enjoyed the book and hope people will check it out. I want to thank you for taking time out today with us.
Matt May:
Absolutely. Thank you.
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Here’s an interview with Matt at TomPeters.com:
LINK