Daily Kaizen

This week’s quote comes from the great interview with Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe that was published in this month’s Harvard Business Review.  For those of you that have not had a chance to read this interview I would highly recommend it.  Much of the interview is focused on Toyota’s challenge to balance growth with the availability of talented leaders that are skilled in the ways of the Toyota Production System.  It was fascinating to me to see how disciplined Toyota is in their people development processes.  Watanabe remarks in the interview that it takes more then twenty years to develop a leader that can master the Toyota Way.  Twenty years!  What US company has that type of long-term focus and commitment? 

At the conclusion of the interview Watanabe talk about his vision for the future, and the creation of a “dream car.”  A car that will transform both the experience of driving and the environment in which one drives.  As I read his vision I almost rolled my eyes, but then I came to the final paragraph of the section where he claims that engineers are already making great progress on the technologies to get Toyota there.  Very inspiring. 

For the quote I chose a paragraph where Watanabe discusses the companies new found focus on radical change:

“People can use revolutionary approaches while making incremental improvements.  You can do that.  In fact, while trying to come up with incremental improvements, many people come up with revolutionary ideas.  The two have different focuses; there’s continuous change in kaizen and there’s discontinuity in kakunshin.  I am only trying to get people to make the leap from incremental improvement to radical improvement whenever possible.”

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