Page 252 - Toyota Under Fire

LESSONS

know the words of the Toyota Way, but understand how those
words should drive their actions and their decisions.
A crisis can help you sort through your priorities. And that’s
what the crises at Toyota did. The recession awakened the com-
pany to its overexposure to market volatility and drove renewed in-
vestment in kaizen and problem solving to increase flexibility and
productivity (thereby driving down costs and risk). The recall crisis
illustrated cultural breakdowns, communication inefficiencies,
and creeping bureaucracy that was inhibiting customer focus.
Toyota did not suddenly go from a model company with one
of the strongest, most customer-oriented cultures in the world
to a basket case. The fundamentals of the strong culture that
made Toyota so successful were largely intact, yet critical weak-
nesses evolved when the company grew too fast to fully develop
its people in the Toyota Way. Even with everything that Toyota
does right, it was still possible for the company to lose sight of its
core goals and to lose touch with its customers.
That brings us to another crucial point about culture. To sur-
vive the weaknesses that inevitably develop, a corporate culture
has to have clear and objective standards, codified in such a way
that self-correction is possible. Having a culture that recognizes
a loss of direction is absolutely critical to long-term survival. Per-
haps the best analogy here is the U.S. Constitution. The Consti-
tution is in many ways a codification of the ideals of American
political culture. More often than many Americans would like
to admit, the American polity has wandered from the ideals ex-
pressed in the Constitution, but the Constitution has provided
the basis for these errors to be corrected. Ending slavery and seg-
regation didn’t require a completely new Constitution; it required
following the Constitution more closely, ensuring that its guaran-
tees applied to everyone. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights

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