Page 8 - Toyota Under Fire

FOREWORD

Capital can be raised by others from the very same sources you
raised yours. Factories can be built or bought by others. Distri-
bution contracts can be signed or snatched from under your feet.
But what no one can exactly replicate (perhaps not even your-
self if you tried to do it again from scratch) is your culture: the
complex system of shared beliefs, norms, and values; the patterns
of interaction and expectations of conduct that are implicitly
and automatically rewarded or punished; the words and shared
meanings that shape narratives and conversations; the founding
stories; the implicit mechanisms of coordination and collabora-
tion that are so hard to pin down yet are the very essence of your
organization.
Culture is, in the terminology of management scholars, an
intangible asset, a key strategic resource, and a source of sustain-
able competitive advantage because it is path dependent and
therefore unique to each organization; because it yields value in
terms of productivity, customer service, or innovation; because it
is nearly impossible to deconstruct and reproduce; and because
it is not available for others to acquire. And yet, the very reasons
that make culture so valuable make it also extraordinarily com-
plex to manage. Culture cannot be created at will or mandated
from above. A corporate culture emerges from a history of in-
teractions inside and outside an organization, beginning with a
set of values the founders projected into the organization they
created, and shaped by the actions and choices of the leaders at
all levels of the organization who followed. Culture is built over
years, not over off-sites.
Culture is tested at times of crisis: when conflicting priori-
ties arise, when unexpected events threaten the very survival of
an organization, when multiple paths of action are presented and
conflicting views of the world take hold. During those times,

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