Page 9 - Toyota Under Fire

FOREWORD

culture helps make sense of the new reality, frames decisions, and
defines priorities. But a culture can also break down or be aban-
doned under stress unless leaders meaningfully reinforce it, even
in the midst of a crisis. Strong cultures can, in fact, be built and
sustained only by leaders with strong ethical backbones.
The last decade has witnessed a series of business failures—
from Enron, to WorldCom, to AIG, Washington Mutual, or Leh-
man Brothers—that have cost employees, shareholders, and tax-
payers trillions of dollars. Millions of jobs have been lost, national
economies have shrunk, and public deficits have ballooned as a
consequence. A myriad of explanations have been offered, but one
consistent factor underlay each of those organizations: a culture
shaped by leaders who put profit maximization above any other
objective and who were willing to push their business to the edge of
what was legally permissible or morally acceptable, under the pre-
tense of creating shareholder value.
Those are some of the accusations that were leveled at Toy-
ota at the height of the crisis. After reading this book, it will be
abundantly clear that those accusations couldn’t have been more
off base. In the challenges of the recession and the recall crisis,
Toyota leaders weren’t passing the buck or looking for someone
else to blame. They were guiding the organization to reinvest in a
strong culture of continuous improvement and putting custom-
ers first. Toyota leaders were making sure that the company was
investing in people and looking toward the long term, not just
the next quarterly report.
In an effort to begin the long and painstaking process of cre-
ating a business management culture that prioritizes honesty,
integrity, and creating real value, five years ago Thunderbird es-
tablished a management version of the ancient Hippocratic Oath
physicians have taken for 2,400 years. The Thunderbird Oath of

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