I have often heard it said that Toyota’s methods may be fine for Toyota or for Japanese companies, but they can’t really be made to work in the U.S.A. This is a widespread perception in this country. Widespread and wrong.
There are several reasons it’s wrong, but I can point to one factor in particular, often overlooked, that gives the lie to this idea.
Fundamental to Toyota’s methods is employees with high levels of persistence and decent problem solving skills. This is what produces the continuous step-wise improvements for which Toyota’s methods are known.
If you can find employees who can learn to solve problems and will persist in their efforts to improve the business, you can build a Lean organization. The widespread belief that Lean won’t work in this country is wrong because persistence and problem solving skills are not uniquely Japanese virtues, and evidence of this fact is everywhere.
Don’t believe it? Consider your surroundings: The internet. YouTube. iPhones. Drones. Vote fraud. Whacking bin Laden. Illegal immigration. NASCAR.
These are all manifestations of or a motivation for persistence and problem solving skills.
NASCAR?
Yeah. NASCAR teams are constantly searching for the minute advantage that can put them at the winner’s podium. The advantage required is almost incalculably small. A 500-mile race is 2,640,000 feet long. A convincing but still interesting winning marging would be 20 feet. Carving 70 milliseconds — seventy-thousandths of a second — off a single pit stop can provide that needed margin. Persistence and problem solving skills are the keys to finding the winning advantage.
This is true in virtually any competitive activity, whether it is in business, or a primarily cognitive exercise like chess, or an activity requiring some combination of mental and physical ability, like playing a musical instrument, bowling, skiing, or racing cars, powerboats, sailboats, bicycles, or a marathon. The competitive activity need not be against another person. Most surfers seek only to be better than they were yesterday; they compete against themselves. Success in any of these areas requires persistence and problem solving skills.
Admittedly, persistence and problem solving skills aren’t as common as most employers would like, but at least the problem solving skills can often be taught. Persistence, probably not so much.
The point is that there is nothing uniquely Japanese, or American for that matter, about persistence and problem solving skills. What sets apart successful companies, successful societies, and successful individuals is, in large part, possession of a culture of persistence, and decent problem solving skills.
So if you believe Lean can’t work in your company, maybe you need to think again about the culture of your company and of the people you hire.
Copyright 2014 by Paul G. Spring. All rights reserved.