The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development

Abstract

Given the existence of this book, you may not be surprised to hear that we think that Toyota is indeed still an inspiration today. That being said, we also think that there were some serious failures of leadership and leadership development at Toyota. In fact, we think that some departments of Toyota simply failed to live up to the Toyota Way in some of their actions and behaviors as the recall crisis unfolded. Those failures do not mean, though, that we can’t learn important lessons from Toyota on how to make lean leaders. In fact, they mean that there is all the more to be learned. The conclusion of Toyota’s efforts to reflect and learn from the various crises, efforts led by Akio Toyoda, was not that there were flaws in the Toyota Way, but rather that there were failures in following the Toyota Way. The recommended solution to these problems wasn’t fundamental change but increased attention to fundamentals. In other words, the company needed (as always) to return to the basics of the Toyota Way.