Page 208 - Toyota Under Fire

RESPONSE AND THE ROAD TO RECOVER Y

profitability despite a crash in demand. Of course, it could have
achieved much higher profits if it had followed the layoff poli-
cies that have become de rigueur in the modern economy. Those
profits, however, would have been cold comfort in the depth of
the recall crisis, when the company would have had to struggle
to react at all after having let go thousands of capable personnel.
The reports coming in from SMART starkly illustrated the
need to reconnect customer input to all of Toyota’s engineering,
design, and customer service processes. These ex post facto cus-
tomer interactions were helpful, but they weren’t a solution to
the underlying problem of not having enough direct customer
input in everything the company did. The actual engineers who
were designing the part, system, or function or were responsible
for improving it have to have direct customer contact and see the
problems firsthand.
Putting customers first was quite difficult if too many parts of
the company didn’t really know what customers wanted and how
they felt. Toyota’s rapid growth and ascent to the number one
market share position probably played a role in the emergence
of this serious disconnect with customers. When a company is
striving to reach the top spot, it is obvious that there are customer
needs and issues that are not being met—otherwise the company
would already be at the top of the heap. Once a company be-
comes number one in the marketplace, it’s all too easy to slip
into a mode of thinking that customer needs are being fully met.
The market position becomes all the validation that is needed,
and the urgency of ferreting out customer tastes, opinions, and
satisfaction fades. Jim Lentz confirmed this view, saying: “As
I look at where we were in the past, what we had become . . .
with our success . . . as a company, we had a little bit of an
attitude. Arrogance is probably the best explanation. What we

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