Page 243 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

This attitude of thinking about the entire company is all well
and good, but in a complex global enterprise, it is impossible for ev-
eryone to communicate with everyone else. Each person we spoke
to at Toyota thought of himself as a team player. This was drilled
into them from the day they entered the company. Yet working
in whatever teams they were part of was not enough. There needs
to be a constant focus on understanding the weak points in team-
work and communication and looking to improve those block-
ages that prevent the right people from communicating about the
right things. This is an endless journey for every company.
In response to these cross-company communication weak-
nesses, Toyota put enormous resources into streamlining com-
munication, adding engineers to focus on quality, dramatically
increasing travel to go and see, bypassing the bureaucracy to get
customer data to the right people, creating weekly quality confer-
ence calls of executives across functions, and more. Yet, we guar-
antee that this will not fix the problem forever. As the company
recovers and begins to grow again, it will take constant vigilance
to avoid creeping bureaucracy that blocks communication and
teamwork across the company.

A Never-Ending Cycle
We can’t emphasize enough that Toyota’s efforts in response to the
crisis were neither radical changes nor short-term “projects.” The
efforts were to a large degree the same agenda that Akio Toyoda
had set when he first became president, more than six months be-
fore there was any thought of the recall crisis: to strengthen core
Toyota values.
Akio Toyoda grew up in the family that had founded Toyota
values. It is evident to anyone who spends time with him that he
still cherishes the core principles today in a very personal way.

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