What Toyota has learned?

Earlier this week Toyota president Akio Toyoda gave a speech which was almost like an answert to my previous post about How should business leaders learn from GM's latest turning point?

In HBS Newsletter last week Nancy F. Koehn, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, highlighted three fundamental management issues on which GM has failed for decades:

1. First, pay close attention to what is happening to consumers' lives in the context of the larger environment—not only their stated preferences, but their hopes, dreams, wallets, lifestyles, and values.


2. Second, keep an equally close eye on the competition.


3. And third, understand how a company's structure and culture relate to its strategy.

In his speech this week Mr Toyoda addressed all of these fundamental issues and outlined how Toyota is going to move forward. His speech covers many things from company philosophy to recovering from past challenges, from current challenges to realigning the organization and re-segmenting the market to overcome the challenges.

There is one paragraph I want to highlight from the speech, but you should read the whole speech.

Rather than asking, “How many cars will we sell?” or, “How much money will we make by selling these cars?” we need to ask ourselves, “What kind of cars will make people happy?” as well as, “What pricing will attract them in each region?” Then we must make those cars.

Matt May said it well in his blog: If every company leader thought and acted in the transparent manner you will hear in Akio-san's message, I dare say the world would be in a far better position today.

Photo by Current News Stories