Page 247 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

Toyota had overproduced and was not flexible enough to adapt.
That was the problem Niimi saw that the company needed to
work on to strengthen it for the future.
In terms of the recall crisis, taking responsibility isn’t just
about poor communication or perspectives on whether sticky
pedals are a safety issue or not. It means examining why rumors
and innuendo were able to take hold of the public consciousness.
It means examining why so many people were willing to make
the leap from limited technical issues and gray areas like floor
mats and sticky pedals to believing that Toyota was producing
dangerous cars that could zoom out of control at any moment. It
means examining why so many people would believe that Toyota
was knowingly producing dangerous vehicles and hiding from
the consequences. Toyota executives believe that if Toyota had
done a better job of listening to customers and building trust,
even the sticky pedal problem would have been unable to make a
dent in the company’s public image. The fault lies in not building
a stronger base of goodwill.
Akio Toyoda has been illustrating this concept with an anal-
ogy about homemade versus mass-produced food. No matter
how safe mass-produced food is, it doesn’t give you the same
peace of mind as a meal made by your mother. Even if you get
sick after a meal, and someone starts a rumor that your moth-
er’s cooking was at fault, you are unlikely to believe the rumor.
According to Toyoda, the strong relationship and trust between
mother and child insulates against virtually any attack: “Even in
such a case, the relationship between the child and the mother
would not be changed. I think their relationship has been totally
insulated from the noise outside. . . . So the way we talk to cus-
tomers who are not already committed to Toyota really has to be
improved to give peace of mind to those people as well.”

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