Page 14 - Toyota Under Fire

PREF ACE

said, “The verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for un-
intended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas. Period.”
But a year earlier, when the crisis was blazing out of con-
trol, the allegations against Toyota came as quite a shock to my
system. When the Saylors’ accident happened, Tim and I were
putting the finishing touches on some research into how Toyota
builds leaders. I had visited Toyota plants and offices throughout
the United States and marveled at how Toyota did not lay associ-
ates off, but rather kept them fully engaged in training and kaizen
(continuous improvement), so that the company would emerge
stronger when the recession let up. The recession, though, was
beginning to look like small fry compared to the firestorm of crit-
icism that the company was now facing.
The allegations about Toyota made no sense to me. When I
started my academic career in 1982, I was a bona fide cynic. Like
most people, I believed that executives of large corporations were
concerned with only three things—profits, profits, and profits. I
had studied many highly praised management programs to “em-
power” the workforce that, on close examination, had yielded
only temporary gains and minor cosmetic improvements in the
look of the workplace as employees subverted attempts to be ma-
nipulated by uncommitted managers. Then I came upon Toyota
in 1983, and my career would never be the same. For the first
time in my research, I saw a company in which managers really
did invest in developing their employees; in which teamwork was
rewarded over individual grandstanding; in which the workers
exerted just as much effort when the boss was away as when he
was looking over their shoulders. What Toyota managers and
team members told me in interviews was borne out by what I
saw in the manufacturing plants and learned from former Toyota
employees who became my colleagues. Of course, the quality and

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