People Development

When one visits Toyota, it′s surprising to see the “Good Thinking, Good Products” banners and the emphasis on people development everywhere. The effort they put into developing people is of course something we have heard about and read about. However, it is easy to dismiss as folklore until we see real examples of the people development system. During a factory visit we found an overview over the development plan that operators, team-leaders and managers go through. The use of Training Within Industry (TWI) methodology is central to the basic training of people. However, a couple of other things stood out when we studied the presentation. First, plant managers have to be able to perform assembly-line work and second, it takes an operator 11 years to reach the level of specialist and then 25 years to reach the level of senior specialist! Something that suggests that Toyota has always viewed their manufacturing personnel as knowledge workers. It reminded us of the classic Toyota quote “first we make people, then we make products”. Toyota have been making people for over 70 years (if one counts the bankruptcy as the starting point) but what would “making people” look like in a Western company just starting out with Lean? We know we cannot copy Toyota, but we can use them as our mentor and follow their learning curve to develop our own people-centric system.

I was reminded of this experience recently when I was listening to a conversation in a purchasing department between the newly-hired purchasing manager, the purchasing team and the VP of supply chain. It dawned on me that one of the team members was running the whole purchasing system on his own, with all the knowledge and skills required to perform each job tacit. I could sense the frustration growing in the VP and that the purchasing manager had more or less given up on finding out what was going on in his own department. 

Here he was, in charge of a department handling up to 30M Euros in purchased parts and materials for projects as well as for sales and after-sales services, and each piece of knowledge needed was inside the head of one of his team members. Furthermore, it seemed like they (the VP and the purchasing manager) had been waging a battle of attrition with the team member. To them, it felt as if they had no control whatsoever over the process they were supposed to manage, let alone make any strategic decisions on the development of suppliers. The purchaser didn′t really understand what all the fuss was about. He knew how to do his job, and he did it very well. He was well-liked by suppliers and knew the ins and outs of each of his most important suppliers, his knowledge about shipping routes, incoterms and contracts were also impressive. This guy was obviously brilliant at his job. The problem was, how on earth could they get anyone else to do that job, and perform at the same high level? What if he gets hit by a train on his way home, or less dramatically, decides to look for a new job? The system didn′t scale very well either, so it was obvious that something had to be done. The VP was very concerned with the situation and was looking for ways to address the problem.

At first, we tried to get their specialist to write down everything he did. To capture the knowledge, sort it, codify it and share it. Managers would know what is going on and colleagues can immediately perform the same job to the same standards. Well, we created a lot of frustration, both for the team and ourselves, while at the same time alienating our super-purchaser, who was now occupied with creating standardization documents and not doing any value-adding work. Clearly it wasn’t working out. So, we turned to Lean and Toyota for inspiration. We knew we sorely needed to develop the skills of the rest of the team and we knew that we needed to develop a deeper understanding of the actual purchasing process. Even though the process seemed fragile, it was clearly working pretty well. 

Like with most things, Toyota seem to do everything slightly different. We all know about its disciplined approach to standardized work and how they systematically engage every team member, as well as all leaders, in Kaizen. There is a constant worry that systems, rules & responsibilities will create a sense of false security and get in the way of people’s awareness of quality. In Toyota terms, everyone should worry about quality, all of the time. Thinking back to our visit, the emphasis on people development is everywhere, both in the museum and in the factory, but how do they train and develop people? We (in the West) seem to assume that you can give people rudimentary training in the basic steps of a job and then expect them to perform. However, Toyota are serious and thorough when it comes to people development, leaving as little as possible to chance. For example, newly hired engineers go through a 6-years structured training program, while carrying out value-added work, before they are considered “real engineers”, and it′s the team leaders’ responsibility to support each team member's learning curve[1]. Furthermore, each engineer and manager are supported by a mentor. The mentor is responsible for carefully constructing each cycle of learning to help develop a solid starting point for the necessary skill sets required for the job they are hired to do. From learning the specific steps of human motion involved in a standardized operation, learning how to co-operate with other departments, functions or sub-suppliers, and learning TPS by observing actual work at the actual place and making suggestions for improvement[2]. Little gets left to chance when it comes to developing people, as people are considered the company′s most valuable resource.

Taking inspiration from Toyota, the purchasing team set up a mentoring system where the expert purchaser was allowed to support his colleagues as a mentor, helping them go through the same process of learning he himself had been through, but in a much more structured and systematic way - with each team member individually climbing the technical learning curves necessary to perform the job. when they saw a need for it, the team created small visual documents to capture key knowledge points in each process. For example, what incoterms to use with different suppliers, or the critical steps in the ERP system's purchasing process - something that allowed both the purchasing manager and the VP to gain a deeper understanding of the overall process, and to spot possible problems that could affect the team, the overall performance of the business, or simply fix snags in the ERP system that had to be addressed. The mentoring system felt awkward at first, but the manager and VP were determined to make it work. We could see that it freed up the specialist to do his job and at the same time we noticed that the other team members started to get better at their jobs. Climbing the learning curve, one task cycle after the other. Over time we also discovered and mapped the different competencies required for the job as a team.

The mentoring system challenged their own leadership style. In the beginning the purchasing manager and VP were looking for ways to control the purchasing system, and control their expert, who was viewed as someone uncontrollable. This created conflict, but more importantly we realized there was a lack of mutual trust between managers and team members. To support the mentoring system, we needed to develop mutual trust. Again, looking to Lean for inspiration, we created a visual management system, an Obeya room, as a place for collaboration and discovery - to help us get a clearer view of the overall business, and the purchasing system, including its suppliers and its internal customers. Moving away from control, we used the Obeya to develop teamwork and by encouraging the team to surface problems and by supporting them in problem-solving. 

What we discovered in the process was that we had been the problem, not the purchaser. We realized that our mental model; “make his knowledge explicit, then give the standards to his colleagues along with some rudimentary training and expect the same level of performance”, was wrong. Instead, we had to accept that the only way team members could truly learn to perform to the same level, was by following the learning curve as he had. By systematically supporting the mentoring system and the Obeya system we discovered more and more about the purchasing system and the skills and competences needed to create good quality work.

To develop the next generation of experts (in our case, purchasing experts) we need a system for people development. One that allows people to develop their skills and expertise as part of their job. Where deeper thinking is encouraged through Kaizen and where people are seen as unique assets, not as interchangeable parts that can be acquired and disposed of as needed. Key to this people development system are the mentors who have gone through the learning cycles before us. Instead of looking at the experts within our company as potential problems, we should consider them valuable resources. The mentor’s role is not to give answers or tell people what to do, but to carefully construct individual learning cycles for each person, give honest feedback to the learning process, and identify the next step for their mentees. As a company our biggest asset is our people, and we become and remain competitive as we continuously develop the expertise of these people. As such, Lean is truly a people-centric approach to competitiveness. In the words of Akio Toyoda: “We say at Toyota that every leader is a teacher developing the next generation of leaders. This is their most important job.” 

Check out our book The Lean Sensei (US, Europe, Polska) on the role of the Sensei in developing Lean Leaders.

[1] Jim Morgan & Jeffrey Liker, (2018) Designing the Future Chapter 4 – McGraw Hill

[2] Steven Spear, (2004) Learning to Lead at Toyota - Harvard Business Review