A while back I wrote a series on the Toyota Way.\u00a0 Toyota is unquestionably one of the top manufacturing companies in the world producing high quality products at a very low cost.\u00a0 At the center of this is the Toyota Production System (TPS) which formalizes production structures throughout the manufacturing process.\u00a0 However, behind the scenes is a culture of innovation that permeates the entire company.\u00a0 Other companies can mimic TPS, but creating a culture of innovation continues to be their greatest challenge.<\/p>\n
Toyota believes that efficiency alone cannot guarantee success\u2026 What\u2019s different is that the company views employees no just as pairs of hands, but as knowledge workers who accumulate chie \u2013 the wisdom experience \u2013 on the company\u2019s front lines.\u00a0 Toyota therefore invests heavily in people and organizational capabilities, and it garners ideas from everyone and everywhere: the shop floor, the office, the field.\u00a0 ((Takeuchi, Osono and Shimizu.\u00a0 June 2008.\u00a0 \u201cThe Contradictions that Drive Toyota\u2019s Success.\u201d\u00a0 Harvard Business Review, Page 96.))<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
While we\u2019d often believe that Asian companies must be more hierarchical, at Toyota, the collaborative and innovative culture is actually flatter than in leading organizations in the U.S.\u00a0 Regardless of the actual organization structure, the ability to present any idea flattens out the company and allows innovations to happen more quickly and easily.\u00a0 We see the same type of thing at Google where employees can go work on whatever they want and Google will see which ideas eventually \u201cfloat\u201d.<\/p>\n
Toyota fosters a complex web of social networks because it wants \u201ceverybody to know everything.\u201d\u00a0 The company develops horizontal links between employees across functions and geographic boundaries, grouping them by specializations and year of entry; creates vertical relationships across hierarchies through teaching relationships and mentoring; and fosters informal ties by inviting employees to join clubs based on birthplaces, sports interest, hobbies, and so on.\u00a0 ((Ibid))<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I\u2019ll be honest and state that I have no idea if Toyota has implemented any type of a social network technology, but this is basically what we\u2019re talking about: something like Facebook.\u00a0 In Serena Software\u2019s well known Facebook Friday\u2019s where employees are given an hour to network and collaborate each week, some of that time can be spent simply playing on-line scrabble across continental borders.\u00a0 This type of \u201cgetting to know you\u201d activity eventually leads to better collaboration opportunities as you have made relationships and have an understanding about skillsets in other areas.\u00a0 We seem to be starting the processes of creating these networks in our own organizations, but adoption across the enterprise will be our greatest hurdle as some older employees are still wary of social medias and privacy.<\/p>\n
HBR goes on to outline some key characteristics of Toyota executives:<\/p>\n
\n
- Willingness to listen and learn from others<\/li>\n
- Enthusiasm for constantly making improvements<\/li>\n
- Comfort with working in teams<\/li>\n
- Ability to take action quickly to solve a problem<\/li>\n
- Interest in coaching other employees<\/li>\n
- Modesty\u00a0 ((Ibid))<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
As I looked at this article from a Human Resources point of view, it became apparent to me that everything revolves around engaging employees in a culture of communications.\u00a0 This is not only laterally with a flow of ideas, but also up the management chain where receptivity to ideas is very high.\u00a0 We in HR have the opportunity to help create and implement these networks in our own organizations.\u00a0 We have the ability of providing employee portals that allow and facilitate communication and feedback.\u00a0 But while we sit around focusing on automating a performance process that is probably already broken, have we taken a look at engaging employees in an endeavor that will influence the productivity of the enterprise?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A while back I wrote a series on the Toyota Way.\u00a0 Toyota is unquestionably one of the top manufacturing companies in the world producing high quality products at a very low cost.\u00a0 At the center of this is the Toyota…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,44,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strategies","category-innovation","category-web-20"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}