Tag: Toyota

Toyota Thinking: Leadership, Systems, and Continuous Improvement

Toyota is often cited as the inspiration for Lean, but its success is rooted in leadership behaviors, management systems, and a deep commitment to learning—not tools or slogans. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on Toyota’s approach to quality, continuous improvement, psychological safety, and respect for people. Many of these posts explore what leaders outside Toyota often misunderstand—and what truly matters if they hope to learn from Toyota rather than copy it.

Long-Term Thinking: What NUMMI Understood and GM Struggled to Practice

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TL;DR: GM said it believed in long-term thinking. NUMMI actually practiced it. A 1987 GM executive summary admitted that short-term financial pressure drove decisions...

What Ford and the UAW Saw in Japan in 1981 —...

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In 1981, Ford Motor Company and UAW leaders traveled to Japan to study Toyota, Nissan, and Mazda -- and they came home with very...

Inside the 1987 NUMMI Management Practices Executive Summary: Why Leadership Mattered...

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TL;DR: In 1987, GM accurately documented why NUMMI worked--and it wasn't tools, techniques, or discipline. This internal report reveals a management system built on...

“Toyota Culture” 20 Years Later: Why Liker’s Lessons Still Matter in...

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TL;DR Twenty years later, Jeffrey Liker's message still applies: Lean fails when it's treated as a set of tools instead of a leadership system....

Five NUMMI Tour Lessons That Still Define Lean Thinking

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A 2005 tour of the NUMMI plant revealed lessons about Lean that had little to do with tools and everything to do with leadership,...

Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape: October 31, 2025

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This edition of Ryan McCormack's Operational Excellence Mixtape highlights how Lean thinking continues to deliver real results when it's treated as a management system,...

How Great Leaders Prevent Mistakes and Learn from the Ones That...

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I recently gave a virtual keynote for a global manufacturing company that's a customer of KaiNexus. Their leaders wanted to explore how to strengthen...

Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape: September 19, 2025

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This edition of Ryan McCormack's Operational Excellence Mixtape explores productivity, leadership, and change through a systems lens. From Canada's long-standing productivity challenge and lessons...

Five Years of My Favorite Mistake: Lean, Toyota, and the Human...

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When I launched the My Favorite Mistake podcast in September 2020, I hoped to create space for leaders and innovators to share the moments...

From Cost Cutting to Real Continuous Improvement: A Lesson from My...

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TL;DR: I learned SQDC the hard way at GM--first under cost- and throughput-obsessed leadership, then from a NUMMI-trained plant manager who showed me why...

Psychological Safety in Lean: What Toyota Gets Right–and Why It Matters

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tl;dr Lean doesn't work without psychological safety. Toyota understands that continuous improvement depends on people feeling safe to speak up about problems, mistakes, and...

Hoshin Kanri and Managing on Purpose: Lessons from Former Toyota Leader...

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Former Toyota leader Mark Reich explains why Hoshin Kanri is not a top-down planning exercise, but a leadership system for aligning strategy, developing people,...
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