by Lee Fried, on 28 May 2007 03:27 pm
The Journey
Quote of the Week
I started reading the new Jeffery Liker book last week called Toyota Talent and I have found it very insightful. In the book Liker reveals the people development systems that Toyota has in place that have been so effective for the company. If I had read this book a year ago I don’t believe I would have found it nearly as interesting or useful since I was still mainly focused on leading event driven Lean. A year ago I was much more focused on solving problems for people then I was helping them solve them on their own. I would apply the tools and principles, but did very little to teach line managers and staff how to do what I already new how to.
Now that I am deep into the Model Line work many of the lessons that Liker brings out within the book really ring true and confirm that we are doing the right work. In order for us to be successful everything we do needs to be focused on developing people. Almost every ounce of our energy as a consultancy is now focused on teaching as opposed to doing. It has been fun to watch many of the Line managers that we are working with make huge strides in their ability to manage, lead, think and behave effectively. In this spirit I am going to take a quote from Liker:
“The techniques are valuable, but people cannot learn to make them work if they are not challenged and supported in the process of learning how to make them work. The dilemma, then, is that people merely want to copy the outward appearance of what Toyota is doing, but they do not want to pursue the much harder and time-consuming aspect of changing their own behavior to replicate Toyota’s culture and infrastructure.”
on 29 May 2007 at 9:00 am 1.Jeff said …
Hi Lee,
I’m new to your Blog, and noticed your article about Toyota Talent. I am also reading and finding it a very useful book.
We are heavy users of the TWI Job Instruction methodology that Liker and Meier discuss in the book. We find JI to be an essential element in implementing standard work. It is a simple method to improve communication and knowledge transfer. It helps us treat communication as a series of descrete steps or packets, not the stream on consiousness that most of us practice.
The JI Motto is: If the person hasn’t learned, the instructor hasn’t taught. This puts the challenge for a person’s learning on the instructor, not the person (although they must be capable and willing). We don’t expect people to learn by making mistakes. We expect them to learn from good training. If people are expected to do work in a new way, they must be trained, and that is the leaders responsibility.
Check out our local SME chapter website for more information on TWI, and consider joining us next week at The TWI Summit in Orlando.
http://chapters.sme.org/204/TWI_Materials/TWIPage.htm
http://www.twisummit.com/default.asp
Jeff
on 03 Jun 2007 at 4:10 pm 2.Lee Fried said …
Hi Jeff,
I checked out your chapter and it looks like you are doing great work. We are currently in the process of rolling out a TWI based program in many parts of our healthcare organization and it is exciting to see how engaged teams are becoming.
Thanks for sharing,
Lee