Page 7 - Toyota Under Fire

FOREWORD

trying to hide the facts, of putting profits before safety. But the ul-
timate test lay not in what senior leaders said and did in the days
and weeks following the incident but in how the culture responded
in the weeks and months thereafter. The defining moment of Toy-
ota’s response was not a specific pronouncement by an executive
in Japan or the United States but how Toyota’s staff turned its en-
ergy to finding ways to improve, how Toyota’s hundreds of cus-
tomer service representatives responded to the tens of thousands
of calls received daily from concerned customers, and how deal-
ers worked relentlessly to rebuild trust with Toyota’s customers.
The decision not to outsource customer service to a low-
wage call center turned out to be instrumental in Toyota’s capac-
ity to deal with the crisis, because it allowed its most precious
resource, its culture, to take charge when it was most needed.
Toyota’s hansei philosophy—the expectation that one ought to
accept responsibility for mistakes, learn from them, and avoid
placing blame elsewhere—and its engrained “customer-first”
value proved to be more valuable than any communication strat-
egy money could buy.
Liker and Ogden’s thorough account of the recall crisis brings
home a central message that is relevant across industries and
around the world and that is captured in the closing chapter
of the book: the idea that “turning crisis into opportunity is all
about culture. It’s not about PR strategies, or charismatic leader-
ship, or vision, or any specific action by any individual. It’s not
about policies or procedures or risk mitigation processes. It’s about
the actions that have been programmed into the individuals and
teams that make up a company before the crisis starts.”
As a business leader, when all is said and done, all you’ve got,
really, is your organizational culture. Your technology can be
reverse engineered, if not directly bought in the open market.

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