Page 257 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

will become fragmented, and the company will encounter even
more problems in the future. As in most companies, Toyota’s
concern about not having leaders around the world who could
consistently react in the Toyota Way drove centralized control.
Toyota is learning that it has to trust the leaders it has trained or
the whole system begins to break down.
It is well known in organizational design that communica-
tion is easiest within self-contained units, and most difficult lat-
erally across different parts of the organization. Clearly there is
critical information centralized in Japan that will stay centralized
in Japan. Finding the balance between that centralization and
figuring out the boundaries of self-reliance within regions so that
they can make as many self-contained decisions as possible will
be an ongoing learning process as Toyota moves forward.
One thing Akio Toyoda realized when reflecting on Global
Vision 2020 was that it was developed in Japan without sufficient
overseas input. Five non-Japanese managing officers have been
tasked with proposing revisions to Global Vision 2020 to ensure
that it truly is a global vision that adequately reflects the input of
the regions. A new version of Global Vision 2020 was scheduled
to be issued in the spring of 2011.

What If?

In the previous chapter, we attempted to document the dam-
age to Toyota from the recall crisis and how it has bounced back.
But the story does beg two questions: what if the recall crisis had
happened to a company that was in a weaker position, be it in
terms of finances, reputation, or capability; and, what benefit has
the public received from the sensationalism and rumormonger-
ing that surrounded the recall crisis?

226