Toyota Insider Teaches Others How to Think Differently in a New Book that Shows How Toyota Feeds the Right Addiction: Ideas
Westlake Village, CA (PRWeb) February 22, 2007 -- As Toyota gears up to overtake General Motors as the world's #1 automaker, a former Toyota insider believes their success is attributable not to the cars on dealer lots, but the steady stream of ideas that flow through all levels of the company.
"It's not about the cars," explains Matthew E. May, former master instructor and senior advisor to the University of Toyota. "It's not about design, engineering or manufacturing, either. Those are outcomes. What's interesting is the input. It's about ideas -- lots of them - from all over the company.
"Toyota feeds the right addiction, the addiction to ideas, not resources."
May is referring to the fact that Toyota implements over one million ideas a year, roughly 3000 ideas each day. Now he wants the world - including Toyota's competitors - to know how it's done, and to try it for themselves. He's outlined Toyota's greatest strategies in his new book The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation, just out from Free Press.
"I'm not revealing anything Toyota doesn't already make available to the public," he maintains. In fact, Toyota sent May to work with organizations like the Los Angeles Police Department, who looked to Toyota to assist them in driving a culture of innovation from the inside out. "It's the mindset that must change," he counsels. "When you have everyone in your organization coming in to work each day thinking 'good enough never is' and looking for ways to improve the work over the way it was done yesterday, well, you become unstoppable."
May says Toyota defines innovation differently. "Most people hear the word innovation and think 'technology' or 'design.' Not at Toyota. They believe the conventional definition only limits innovation to a few departments. They view innovation the way David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue, does: Innovation is figuring out a way to do something better than it's ever been done before."
That definition aligns with the constant and relentless pursuit of perfection Toyota is known for, and most importantly, it opens up innovation to everyone.
May believes that companies in other industries can learn Toyota's methods, as well. Organizations that retain him outside of the auto industry - like Wells Fargo, The Marine Corps., Quadrant Homes - are finding that they too can tap into the kind of thinking that has led Toyota to be one of the truly great success stories in business.
First, they have to redefine two additional concepts: idea and problem. "A problem isn't something broken," says May, "it's a gap between today and perfection. You have to drop the conventional negativity associated with problems."
Likewise, an idea goes far beyond a suggestion or a simple 'what if?' at Toyota. "An idea is a problem solved elegantly," he explains. "It's documented, diagnosed, solved and executed by the person or people who identify the opportunity. Each one is an elegant solution."
May defines an 'elegant' solution as one in which the optimal outcome is achieved with the minimal expenditure of effort and expense. Elegant solutions, he says, embrace an overarching philosophy of doing far more with much less, a notion that has become synonymous with Toyota and is present to this day in all of their operations, from design and engineering to manufacturing and distribution to sales and marketing. Production seeks to drive out waste to become leaner. Engineering seeks a certain simplicity in product design. Research seeks greater fuel economy through hybrid energy.
"My time with Toyota taught me the softest skill known: thinking," he reflects. In his workshops, natural work teams experience the Toyota difference in several ways, the most important and impactful of which focus on a full-day session of facilitated team problem-solving in which the team arrives at an elegant solution to a real-world problem of their choosing.
It's working, and May's work with the Los Angeles Police Department is proof positive. "I recently took a team from the Counterintelligence/Counterterrorism Bureau through an intense two day session, during which an elite team of bomb technicians created a world class-standard for handling situation involving explosives," he relates. "If these methods work with LAPD, they can work in any organization."
Participants make the connection at a personal level as well. In his workshops, May talks about Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong, each of whom have much in common with the Toyota philosophy.
"They both understand the need to constantly search for tiny things that have dramatic impact on performance. Tiger has reinvented his swing three times, and he defines perfection as an 18 - a perfect golf score. Lance solved the problem of how to climb a mountain more efficiently by dismantling the power equation - he changed the game forever with his low-gear, fast-cadence style. In both cases, it's not about achieving perfection, because that can't be done, but about pursuing it."
By all accounts, Toyota is in a league of it's own. During the same week that Ford announced a buyout of some 45,000 employees and Chrysler announced a profit shortfall of $1.5 billion, Toyota raised its profit forecast 32%, announced aggressive sales goals representing a 10% increase in units sold, and announced they would be adding 8000 engineers to the payroll. May believes Toyota will become the world's number one carmaker ahead of the pundits' predictions.
"They are already number one in terms of revenue, and I wouldn't be surprised if they are number one in production by the end of this year."
For any organization in any industry looking for ways to ensure long-term relevance through constant innovation, the Toyota diet of a few thousand more ideas might be a pretty good place to start.
###
Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/U3VtbS1UaGlyLU1hZ24tSG9yci1NYWduLVplcm8=
|
