Toyota: The Keyser S?ze of Lean

The Usual Suspects was, at the time, a groundbreaking film and, even though it's now 28 years on from its release, I won't spoil the plot twist for any reader who's not yet watched it (you really should do!).

In the film, Keyser S?ze is the unidentified and enigmatic protagonist (or perhaps the antagonist) who is the orchestrator of the crimes, which the police are investigating and have arrested the 'usual suspects' to interrogate and attempt to understand motive and criminal culpability.

His power is in his anonymity and reach, which has accentuated the fear and uncertainty of both the criminals and police, assuring the obedience of the former and the caution of the latter, to the extent that many of them even quietly question whether he actually exists. As one of the suspects, Roger 'verbal' Kint, states during his interview:

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist.

That brings me to Toyota and why they are the Keyser S?ze of Lean.

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Toyota are, quite rightly, the genesis of what we now generically call Lean, and whilst the history is much more complex (as most history is), it was the studies undertaken by Womack & Jones et al, and others, on the Toyota Production System (TPS) / Toyota Way, and the adoption of the term Lean to describe it, that morphed into what is still the ambition of many companies and their leaders, and has given birth to a multi-million (perhaps billion) dollar industry of consultants, educators, tour guides and (ahem) books.

The majority of consultants, authors and educators will include at least one, and often many, examples of how the Toyota Way works and the majority of Lean Systems are modelled on it. The issue is that they will, almost exclusively, focus on the symptoms of Toyota and guide towards the use of tools such as Hoshin Kanri, Daily Management, Problem Solving, Leader Standard Work, Kaizen, Value Stream Maps, etc.

If you visit a Toyota facility on one of their tours, they will allow you to walk quite closely to their production lines, see their people in action, view their Daily Management boards and visual management, observe as they respond to Andon calls and undertake problem solving. They'll talk about the successes that they've achieved and you can see the results of decades of their Operating System.

However, you won't see what really makes TPS successful.

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Just like Keyser S?ze in The Usual Suspects, Toyota have become the enigmatic Lean protagonist, whose 'crimes' are obvious for all to observe in their success, but whose real power lays hidden to most and, worse, is part of a collective Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby a vast number of people believe that they understand what Lean is and erroneously and deleteriously practice it.

They will be able to explain each of the tools and can show you the 'house of Lean', but in a way synonymous with someone showing you a picture of a real house and explaining how the foundations, walls, plumbing, electrics, roof, etc. work, but without an understanding of how to put them together to create the house as the system that it is, more importantly, how to create a living environment that makes the occupier delighted to be there.

They understand the individual component parts but not the system.

Lean, or Lean Leadership as I prefer to refer to it, is a way of thinking, behaving, feeling, acting and living, which positively benefits the employees, society, customers and shareholders, through an organisation that is run with values and an effective strategy, executed with excellence. It is people, not tool, centred and they understand how to use the tools in the right way, creating an Operating System.

The results of an effective Lean Operating System can be measured in the overall business performance, not in individual 'point improvements'. The Leaders don't ask 'Lean Experts' to do the work for them, instead asking for their support in doing the work and learning, and they don't run it as a project or initiative, but as a way of running and leading their business. Leader Standard Work isn't something to be done to gain Lean Certification or to meet a Lean maturity level, but as a way of driving personal and team effectiveness to ensure that you and your team can be the best that you can be, reducing stress and improving results.

There is a lot that we can learn from Toyota's success, including how TPS has supported their recovery from strategic missteps (including their recent tardiness in BEV adoption), but to do so we have to truly want to understand why and how they did it, rather than what they did, and that is the hard part of being a Lean Leader and creating a Lean Enterprise.

Interested to learn more? Then why not click on the links below:

• Leading Lean by Living Lean: Changing how you lead, not who you are
• The Simplicity of Lean: Defeating Complexity, Delivering Excellence
• Leading with Lean: An experience-based guide to Leading a Lean Transformation

Feel free to visit?my Website at:?LeadingwithLean?and?my other?LinkedIn posts?may be found?at this?link.

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