Page 236 - Toyota Under Fire

LESSONS

ready to accept a whole new challenge as the recall crisis fades—
rebuilding that halo and beating a reinvigorated competition.

Respect for People
The Toyota Way principle of respect for people manifested it-
self in many ways during both crises. It is respect for people that
drives Toyota’s commitment to exhaust every other possibility be-
fore laying off team members. It’s respect for people that drives
Toyota’s willingness to put extraordinary trust in hourly employ-
ees to find and solve problems. These decisions paid off over and
over during the last few years. Renee McIntosh, an hourly team
member at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky (TMMK)
who was on special assignment leading the quality circles pro-
gram for her area when the recession hit, saw the payoff from the
decision not to lay off team members:

I never knew anybody who was seriously concerned
about losing their job. But you started seeing team
members, who were not really pro-Toyota, they started
caring more than they did before. . . . There was an
attitude change through the whole shop. People really
wanted to kick in and wanted to help. . . . People were
saying: “We’ve got to step up.”

If Toyota hadn’t maintained that commitment to its people
during the recession, it would not have had the resources to cre-
ate SMART teams or an engineering division focused on cus-
tomer experience.
During the recall crisis, respect for people manifested itself
in the decision to avoid finger-pointing and blaming customers,
suppliers, dealers, or anyone else for the problems that Toyota was

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