Page 233 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

Therefore, the chief questions to ask yourself about how your
company will respond in a crisis are not about contingency plans
and policies, but about your culture and your people. Have you
created a culture that rewards transparency and accepts respon-
sibility for mistakes? Have you created a culture that encourages
people to take on challenges and strive for improvement? Have
you created a culture that values people and invests in their ca-
pabilities? Have you created a culture that prioritizes the long
term? Most attempts to change during a crisis fail. Although a
crisis helps people accept the need for change, implementing the
change takes far too long to make much difference while the cri-
sis is raging.
All of Toyota’s positive actions in the two crises were driven
by the extant Toyota Way culture that it had been cultivating
since the company began. It was the investment in developing
team members’ problem-solving skills all the way to the shop
floor that allowed those team members to contribute materially
to the company’s future when the recession meant that they were
not needed to build cars. Without that investment over many
years, those team members wouldn’t have been the tremendous
asset they were in driving down long-term costs, improving qual-
ity, and boosting productivity. If Toyota had tried to cut costs on
hourly customer service representatives instead of investing in de-
veloping them with the talent, maturity, and judgment to make
tough decisions call by call and rebuild trust with customers, it
would not have achieved customer satisfaction among those with
recalled vehicles that was higher than that for customers whose
vehicles were never recalled. If Toyota executives had responded
to the incredible costs of the recall crisis by reining in spending on
customers and dealers, they would not have been able to main-
tain the highest levels of customer loyalty in the industry. It was a

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