LeanBlog Podcast #37 – Jeff Liker, Toyota Culture, Part 1 of 3

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Here is LeanBlog Podcast #37, once again featuring Dr. Jeffrey Liker, Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan. Dr. Liker is most recently the co-author (with Michael Hoseus) of Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way and many other books, which can be found here on amazon.com. This is part 1 of what will be a 3-part podcast series. Listen to part 2 and part 3.

For earlier episodes, visit the main Podcast page, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS or via Apple Podcasts.

LeanBlog Podcast #37 Key Points

• Overview of the book and how it builds on the previous books.
• The people part is such a foundation of the Toyota Way, had to expand upon it.
• Looking at the cultural assumptions in the 14 principles.
• In the book, seeing a “day in the life” of a Toyota supervisor.
• Get a clearer picture of the “respect for people” principle throughout the book
• Thoughts on implementing Lean the “wrong way.”

If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at leanpodcast@gmail.com or you can call and leave a voicemail by calling the “Lean Line” at (817) 993-0630 or contact me via Skype id “mgraban”. Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast.

Automated Transcript

Mark Graban:
Hi, this is Mark Graban. You're listening to episode 37 of the Lean Blog podcast March 3, 2008. Our guest today is Professor Jeffrey Liker from the University of Michigan and he is co author, most recently of the new book Toyota Culture. And that's what we're going to be talking about here today, the first of a three part discussion that I'm going to release here on the podcast. I hope you'll come back for the future parts two and three in upcoming weeks.

Mark Graban:
As always, if you want to learn more about the podcast, listen to other episodes or comment on a specific podcast episode, you can do so by visiting www.leanpodcast.org and that will forward you to the Lean Blog page specifically for the podcast. So as always, thanks for listening. Well, Jeff, thanks for joining us once again on the Lean Blog Podcast. It's a pleasure to have you here with us.

Jeff Liker:
Good talking to you again, Mark.

Mark Graban:
Thanks. So we're here today to talk about your new book, Toyota Culture, and I was wondering if you could give our listeners an overview of what people should expect to get out of this book and how it builds on some of your previous works.

Jeff Liker:
Well, on the Toyota Way, I had developed a four level model, the 4P model I called it, and the bottom was philosophy, which is long term thinking. I spent a fair amount of time talking about processes, which are the lean processes, the technical processes, to get to what is the underlying assumption, what is the principle behind those tools like Andon and Kanban. Then I talked about how Toyota develops people and partners and leaders. And then I talked about problem solving and some of the ways that they look at problem solving. There are 14 principles in total and a number of case examples.

Jeff Liker:
And when you boil it all down for a given topic, like talking about culture and people, I could only afford to have a chapter. And I realized that that wasn't enough, that the people part is so important and so foundational and that it really deserves a lot more attention. And in fact, a whole book just on that. I didn't know how long the book would be, but I knew that there was more to say. And also aside from pulling out the people, part of the four Ps underlying all the 14 principles are cultural assumptions.

Jeff Liker:
And I kind of talked about them in a total way, but at a high level. But I wanted to get deeper into what are really the cultural assumptions, how these reflections east versus west differences, how they reflect the unique history of Toyota. And then at a higher level, what are the actual policies and procedures for human resources that support that culture and how has that been brought over to the United States? It turned out by the time we were done, we had a 550 page book and probably 10 or 15 pages overlap with that fade away and 530 or 40 pages are all unique. So we were right that there's a lot more to say.

Jeff Liker:
I did the book with Mike Hoseus, who was assembly plant manager and human resource manager for the Georgetown plant and spent time learning the human resource system in Japan. And he added an awful lot to my knowledge of how all the pieces fit together.

Mark Graban:
It seems like it would be quite a challenge to try to distill this idea of culture into a book. Can you tell us a little bit about the process you spent a lot of time directly observing?

Jeff Liker:
Yeah, it was tough. And the Teotihua itself was a challenge. And people in Toyota were saying, if you want to write about the Teota way, that's fine, but I don't know how you can really capture that in a book because it's really who we are. Toyota culture is even more so. It's even more who they are, and it's even more difficult to capture.

Jeff Liker:
So I had been clear from the beginning that we really need to bring it to life with stories. And the way I worked with Mike is Mike. Jose lived it for 12 years and he's still living and he's still supporting Toyota. And he was there every day. And I have higher level conceptual view.

Jeff Liker:
So we had to marry my sociological background and outside view of Toyota with Mike's daily living as well as he's down at the plant now every day so he could walk in and when we had a question, ask somebody or get some document. So it was a combination of that. We focused a lot on the Toyota Georgetown plant because he had access and because we really needed deep stories. As an example, in the Toyota Field book, we talked a lot about the structure of the work team. And there's a lot of people interested in what a team leader does and what a group leader does and what an assistant manager does.

Jeff Liker:
And we had roles and responsibilities and a five page table that detailed a day in the life of what they do when they first come into the plant. We didn't want to repeat that. That was the structure. So instead we found some team leaders and had them write a day in life of an actual day. You know, what actually happens when they come in and when they have some problems, how do they respond to that?

Jeff Liker:
And they're online, but they need to solve problems and they need help from other people. And how do they get that help? And they're going to shut down the assembly line and how do they respond to that? And how do people pull together as a team? And from that story you really get a, a feeling for the culture that you don't get by listing roles and responsibilities in a structural way.

Jeff Liker:
So the book is filled with stories and vignettes and then analyzing what do those mean from a cultural point of view.

Mark Graban:
Yeah, so stories that help illustrate, for example, I mean, people might hear that this Toyota Way principle of respect for people and the mask. Okay, so what does that mean? Give me some examples of interacting with people in that way.

Jeff Liker:
Right, yeah, that's true. Now, despite respect for people, I didn't think it made sense to base this book on my 4Pmodel because this was Toyota culture. I wanted to use Toyota's model. And so we use the foundation, their model, which is respect for people and continuous improvement. Those two things are the, the pillars of the Teta Way from Toyota's point of view.

Jeff Liker:
And those get, I think throughout the whole book you start to get a clear picture of what it means to have respect for people and what it means to continuously improve and how those two are so interrelated. So there isn't like a chapter or a case example on respect for people. It's coming through throughout the whole book.

Mark Graban:
You talk about this earlier in the book, the idea that a lot of companies are going about lean, implementing lean the wrong way, that they're not focusing on the culture and the people side. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the importance and maybe the challenge of trying to emulate or learn from Toyota in that way.

Jeff Liker:
Well, first of all, let me explain the model that underlies the book because we developed a model, a human systems model, and the whole book is based on that model. Every chapter comes from a box or a circle in that model. And what we put in the center of the model we call the quality people value stream. And the output of that is quality people working together with shared two added values to continuously improve, which leads to the purpose of long term mutual prosperity and the value. We looked at that value stream, much like people map a physical process, like the product comes in from the supplier and it sits in inventory and it moves to machine and it sits in inventory and we looked at what happens to the person where they come in and essentially they get a little bit of training and then they set an inventory and maybe get another bit of training.

Jeff Liker:
And most of their career from the point of view of learning, they're sitting in inventory. There's waste and there's actually very little time where they're being developed in Toyota, there's a conscious attempt, there's conscious systems for developing people. And in fact, the main role of managers, from the team leader of the group leader to assistant manager, is to develop people. So in this quality people value stream, we have attracting people so they're trainable, then developing people so they're able, then engaging people so that they're performing and problem solving and then inspiring people. So they're committed to Toyota, they're part of the enterprise, they're part of the social system, they're representing Toyota out in the public and then they're practicing the Toyota way every day through plan, do, check, act.

Jeff Liker:
So that value stream is really the core and then that's supported by specific human resource processes like commitment to stable employment and the tools needed for stable employment. And it's also supported by daily management systems, two way communication and the work group structure and the way leaders are trained to teach rather than to water people around. So that we go through the core value stream and then the formal human resource processes and then the daily management processes and illustrate these at Georgetown. Georgetown plant never set out to imitate Toyota culture. They didn't say we're part of Toyota and let's go and look at what they're doing in Japan and let's try to imitate Toyota in Japan.

Jeff Liker:
They said we have to support the principles of respect for people and continuous improvement. And there are some things that are given that we know that have to be true in the system, one of which is that people have to feel safe about surfacing and admitting that there's a problem, otherwise we can't solve problems and the Toyota production system falls apart. So that wasn't optional. They didn't say, well, if you want to create a safe environment where people are willing to admit problems, that's fine. If you don't, because it doesn't fit America, don't worry about it.

Jeff Liker:
That was a given. So there were a bunch of things like that. There were givens, but they didn't say you have to dress like you're Japanese or eat like you're Japanese or even that you can't have any individuality or that you have to pay everybody exactly the same as we do in Japan, or reward people in the same way. So the Georgetown, Kentucky experience was really one of the first experiments. And they were learning as they went how to combine Western Americans in Kentucky.

Jeff Liker:
And that's a pretty American place, with the principles of Toyota Way coming from Japan. And I think every company needs to do that. They need to. They can't just implement the Toyota culture, they can't simply change their culture. They have to build on their culture.

Jeff Liker:
And they have to start taking seriously the idea of developing people who are committed to and live the culture. And that's this people value stream. And it takes time. For Toyota, it easily takes five to 10 years to develop somebody so that they fit in and understand the Toyota Way. I think the biggest problem with our companies is that they would like to do it in a five day course.

Jeff Liker:
So we have some statements in the book that sound a little bit sarcastic, like maybe Toyota is just slow and it takes them 10 years, but we're Americans, we can do it in five days. On the other hand, Toyota is doing this in the ideal environment where they have complete alignment at the top of the company and they already have the culture and they already have the tools and the processes. And even in that case, it takes them five to 10 years. So why would we be so arrogant to think that we can do it in five or 10 days? Yeah.

Mark Graban:
And it seems like some of those ideas, teaching managers how to operate in a different way, supporting people instead of giving orders, like you said, is that something that is probably considered a non negotiable? I know that's one thing.

Jeff Liker:
Yeah, those are non negotiable. And the idea that a manager is a teacher, that's non negotiable. And doing everything you can to create job security for people is non negotiable. So some purchasing guy in America saying, hey, I can get a deal on this part by moving to India or China and save 30%, it'll require shutting down one of our suppliers in America. That's not allowed.

Jeff Liker:
That's not permitted. The response to the Japanese teacher, and still the Japanese play that role of being the, the sensei, the senior teachers, they would ask if you do this, what message will it send to all the rest of our suppliers who we've been planning, our partners in America? And what is the real problem? Isn't there a way to solve the problem that does not involve shutting down a supplier in America? So they would see that solution of going to China or India as being an easy, quick fix without really studying the problem and without really seriously considering alternatives.

Jeff Liker:
And they, that's what they're. One of the things they're trying to teach is problem solving is really thinking through the problem and all its, and all the implications of solutions and then being very thoughtful about your solutions. And sometimes the solutions require a lot more work than something as simple as we drop a supplier here and shift the work to China. Yeah.

Mark Graban:
So early in the book you tell a similar story. I assume there's some companies that like to say we're quote unquote doing lean, whatever that means. Or you tell the story of one company that even said they wanted Toyota's culture. But it's not like they were making a lot of decisions that run counter to maybe some of the things you were describing. So, I mean, what, yeah, I mean, what's your advice to say, well, just okay, quit fooling yourselves and give up or what?

Jeff Liker:
No, I think you should quit fooling yourself and start working on it.

Mark Graban:
Yeah.

Jeff Liker:
So quit fooling yourself. That A, you're pretty close anyway and B, this is going to happen really fast and see that this is simply a matter of changing a few policies and moving a few machines around. You know, if you're serious and you, and you get the message that there's a different way of thinking that Toyota represents that leads them to be a learning organization continuously improving. And it requires long term thinking. It requires managers to become more reflective and more teachers than orders.

Jeff Liker:
It requires deep learning on the shop floor at every level, which takes time. Then for example, you might say let's pick a few things that we're going to work on for this year and really drive those deeply and learn from those and reflect on those. And then we'll pick a few more things next year and a few more things a year after that. And maybe we need to focus in a few areas instead of spreading this wall to wall. So part of the problem is that when you think that this is a simple technical toolkit or a people toolkit, you can change the technical system through Kanban or cells, or you can change the people through some sort of training program.

Jeff Liker:
When you think of it that way, then you assume that this is something that can be done to the people or the process very quickly and across the board. So a senior manager will water I want Kanban every place you got through the end of the year or when can we get this cultural change stuff done? Can we have everybody thinking differently by the end of the year? And the senior managers who are making those kinds of, who are giving those orders themselves, they're the ones that need to be changed first? Yeah, right.

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