Page 135 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

Koganei was presenting TMC’s view from Japan that it was pre-
mature to issue a public announcement. Miller felt that Koganei
was taking a position without fully understanding the context,
or respecting the experience of TMS executives who were at
the gemba. As Miller explained to us: “I thought our public re-
lations people in Japan were being overly conservative in ad-
dressing this particular issue. They wanted to wait until we had
a cure for the whole thing rather than saying to the public: ‘Hey,
look, we are out in front of this thing, we are working on it, we
are working with NHTSA, and we are going to do everything
possible to resolve this.’”
Toyota’s typical approach to communications is to be ex-
tremely cautious, saying only the bare minimum that can be
absolutely backed up by facts. But this was not a typical envi-
ronment. Miller clearly understood the political context much
better and believed that any lack of detail or delay in the an-
nouncement would cause more harm to Toyota than going pub-
lic before every “t” had been crossed and every “i” dotted. In
short, the e-mail exchange was an internal squabble over the
details of a press release, not a smoking gun memo about hid-
ing a safety issue from the government.
The story of the $100 million savings presentation is also
quite different from what was generally reported. The presenta-
tion was created to brief Yoshimi Inaba, when he assumed the
role of president of TMA early in 2009, on the activities and
importance of the regulatory affairs personnel. As we’ve dis-
cussed elsewhere, every recall is a negotiation, and the NHTSA
can push for recalls without a definitive defect or cause being

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