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.
Last month, in the midst of Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda’s appearance in front of Congress, there was a little sidebar in the USA Today that caught my eye (“Toyoda vs. Toyota“). An oft-repeated (including here in my blog) story in…
Being a huge fan of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, especially so some 17 years after his death, I like any article that concludes with this line: “The lesson of the Toyota recalls is not that Mr. Deming’s Japanese model is…
TL;DR: NPR’s “End of the Line” on NUMMI reminds us that performance problems weren’t caused by “bad workers,” but by bad management systems. The same people who sabotaged cars under GM built world-class quality under Toyota. My experience with a…
Episode #85 is a conversation with David Meier, a former Toyota Georgetown Group Leader and the co-author of the books The Toyota Way Fieldbook and Toyota Talent: Developing Your People the Toyota Way. With Toyota facing widespread attention during the 2010…
Jim Womack visited Lantech, a manufacturer of stretch wrappers and other packaging equipment. While there and visiting the “gemba,” Jim was interviewed about Lean, what he saw at Lantech, and Toyota’s recent problems. You can see the interview here, in…
Random thought related to those from the Big 3 Detroit 3 who are happy to see Toyota suffer, I think I’m coining a term (I can’t find it, or this spelling, via google anywhere): I think I’m coining a phrase:…
I only watched a few minutes of Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda’s live testimony (thanks to online cable news streaming), but the first things I heard prompted me to Tweet about it and I’m following up with a quick post. You…
You heard enough from me yesterday… today I want to share some other voices with you and their thoughts on Lean. First, familiar voices (John Shook and Jeff Liker) and someone who might seem like a new voice in the…
TL;DR: An NPR story about workplace “efficiency” illustrates L.A.M.E.–Lean As Misguidedly Executed–where tools like 5S are applied without respect for people or employee engagement. True Lean builds capability with the people doing the work, not through top-down cost cutting. Oh…
Continuing my series on re-reading Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s book Out of the Crisis, I’m posting a series of tweets from the Chapter along with my thoughts and comments. At about 70 pages, it’s a long, dense chapter, including Deming’s…
I had long given up on Newsweek as a source of news (hey, at least it’s published weekly unlike IndustryWeek). But this cover caught my eye at the airport on Friday, I had to buy it instead of waiting to…
What is your role at work? Your purpose? Those questions might make you really stop and think. I sat in yesterday on a class, taught by an ex-Toyota leader, that raised a number of thought-provoking questions about Lean and the…