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.
It came across my LinkedIn feed again last week, and then a day later, a friend sent me the same thing from Instagram. Same story, a few words moved around, or copied word-for-word. If you spend any time in Lean…
I was reading The Birth of Lean, the Lean Enterprise Institute’s collection of interviews with the people who built the Toyota Production System, and one answer from Eiji Toyoda is worth quoting in full. This is Eiji Toyoda on mistakes,…
LinkedIn has a genre of infographic that’s very popular right now… that’s mostly right. You’ve perhaps seen them. A clean illustration of a Toyota assembly line, a worker reaching up for a cord, and a caption along the lines of:…
Part of a six-part series on Toyota’s 1992 booklet, The Toyota Production System. See all six posts in order: What Toyota Didn’t Write Down. Nearly two million improvement proposals in a single year. Ninety-seven percent implemented. That doesn’t sound like…
Part of a six-part series on Toyota’s 1992 booklet, The Toyota Production System. See all six posts in order: What Toyota Didn’t Write Down. 102 seconds versus 300 seconds. That’s the comparison the 1992 booklet uses to make the case…
I have been seeing more AI-generated Lean infographics on LinkedIn lately. So many. It’s annoying. I try not being annoyed, but it’s hard. So, I made one of my own about the trend and posted it on LinkedIn. It collects…
You finally found the perfect hire. The one who did this exact job, at a company just like yours, for six years. No training required. You felt the relief of it. Someone who already knows the work, who can start…
Part of a six-part series on Toyota’s 1992 booklet, The Toyota Production System. See all six posts in order: What Toyota Didn’t Write Down. Picking up the thread from the previous post on Toyota’s April 1992 publication “The Toyota Production…
A lunch, a hand gesture, and the question most Lean implementations are answering backwards. The gesture is the whole thing. The late Hajime Oba held his hands out in front of him, palms down, one higher than the other. “All…
Two questions from a few Toyota mentors — and the Deming idea behind them. You can usually feel it before you can name it. The improvement meeting that used to feel alive is now… polite. People show up. They nod…
Part of a six-part series on Toyota’s 1992 booklet, The Toyota Production System. See all six posts in order: What Toyota Didn’t Write Down. Somewhere along the way in my career, someone handed me a copy of “The Toyota Production…
In July 2006, I pressed record on a conversation with Norm Bodek. The audio quality was poor. I had no idea what I was doing. Norman, who had spent decades going to Japan and had published Ohno and Shingo in…
