A senior Human Resources VP mentioned the other day the value of having her senior executive read "The Toyota Way." I thought, "gee I wonder why we’re still pushing that basic book from 20 years ago." A day or so later an email pitch arrived from the Canadian arm of a "world-wide" consulting firm specializing in "productivity improvement." It suggested the answer.

Since improving results is what I focus on from a human resources and leadership perspective the question is critical. Is someone missing something?

The consulting organization promotes typical North American and European-style approaches. It clearly grew out of an accounting firm broadening its offering to "productivity." Their approach is almost entirely lean manufacturing processes and similar "fixes" that can be "installed" in organizations to reduce cost and streamline out waste in materials and procedures. For a fee they’ll happily come in and spend "4 to 10 months" at your business figuring out which would help. I’ve seen this done with teams of 5 to 25 people. It isn’t cheap.

If you’ve ever tried this you’ll hear them SAY frequently that none of it works unless the people buy into the processes. A very key point, they’ll tell you… and then typically proceed to ignore input, order people to change and "install" the system the way they always do. When it doesn’t work, "culture" gets blamed.

The Toyota Way by contrast outlines 14 core principles that have clearly worked over the years to make Toyota one of the most effective and productive organizations on the planet, with no signs of slowing down or petering out. While the book or ones with similar information about their approach continue to be updated (as recently as 2005) the principles have been applied since the mid-1970’s… consistently – more than 30 years. Few corporate strategies survive anywhere near that long today, with most evaporating on appointment of new senior executives.

A quick review of the 14 principles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way) shows the first 8 appear a lot like the consulting firm – process improvement and so on, with the notable exception of the first principle: "take a long term view." When you read more closely you notice the principles are divided with the last six focusing directly on people and leadership. Look again and you notice that half of the first principles do, too. They may be about improving processes with process methodology, but they emphasize that it must work with and through the people.

The over-riding concept is building a "learning organization" for "continuous improvement" and there is only one ingredient that does the learning and improving – people! In fact, the processes are simply aids to help the people learn for themselves. They are not "solutions" to be "installed" by outsiders who know best. They are tools people in the organization use daily to improve things for themselves. Toyota long pre-dates Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline, itself written more than 15 years ago, which is often said to be the origin of the term "learning organization."

Apparently very few organizations have learned. The dominant "solution" is still this sort of flawed consulting rather than the proven Toyota Way and its variations adapted to all sorts of industries by a tiny minority of very successful companies.

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