Page 267 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

people and we have strong manufacturing, strong sup-
pliers in place, get back to understanding root problems,
but don’t be so focused on the technical side that we
miss the human side.

Challenge is the source of energy to go beyond goodness to
greatness. While these crises were severe, they were just another
of the challenges that Toyota constantly creates for itself to drive
continuous improvement. Just as the performance of a factory is
expected to improve each year, to advance another step toward
True North, the board of directors will assess the company’s per-
formance based on whether it operates better this year than it did
the year before. The goal is never a steady state or returning to the
status quo.
That’s the final and perhaps the most important lesson of
turning a crisis into an opportunity. Expectations and goals mat-
ter. A company that is simply trying to survive a crisis, to get back
to the status quo ante, is never going to do better than that. A
company that is dedicated to continuous improvement, to con-
stantly moving the goalposts to a higher level of performance,
will expect much more from its crisis response. In fact, the crisis
becomes less an obstacle to be overcome and more another tool
in the arsenal of continuous improvement. With that perspec-
tive, it’s far more likely that a firm will do more than just endure
a crisis. It will conquer crisis after crisis and emerge stronger from
each. That’s the standard by which to judge all of Toyota’s history.
Time will tell how this generation of Toyota leaders has lived up
to the standards of its predecessors.

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