This is a question that has intrigued me for some time now. Some people say this question is irrelevant or even that it should not be asked. But to me it is relevant, especially since Toyota seems to have been struggling with this question themselves.
Toyota Way 2001
In April 2001 Toyota published a little booklet called “The Toyota Way 2001” to share its values.
Toyota needed a way to communicate these values to an ever growing group of employees and the traditional way of conveying this implicit knowledge did not fit the new era of Toyota being a truly global company.
In this booklet Toyota explains that The Toyota Way is supported by two main pillars:
- Continuous Improvement
- Respect for People
The struggle
In my quest to learn more about “The Toyota Way 2001” I searched for all the documents I could find about this topic.
I found more information in the sustainability reports that Toyota publishes every year. While reading these reports I found that there was an inconsistency in the order in which Toyota references the two main pillars.
Sometimes they would refer to the two pillars as Continuous Improvement & Respect for People. At other times the two pillars were referenced as Respect for People & Continuous Improvement.
Therefore my question:
What comes first?
2001-2006
In the right graph you can see what I have found in these sustainability reports. In the original document the order was, as stated above:
- Continuous Improvement
- Respect for People
In 2003 and 2004 the order was reversed. The two pillars were listed as:
- Respect for People
- Continuous Improvement
In 2005 the order was reversed once more to the 2001 order.
The 2006 report was interesting: in that report I found both orders. In the Corporate Philosophy section I found that Continuous Improvement was listed as the first pillar; in the Social Aspects section Respect for People was mentioned as the first pillar.
Learnings sofar
Based on the information above one could conclude that the order does not matter, the two pillars are equally important and the question which one comes first is irrelevant
2007-2015
In the years following 2006 Toyota is consistent in the order in which they reference the two pillars:
- Continuous Improvement
- Respect for People
Continuous Improvement is being mentioned consistently as the first of the two pillars. Toyota even calls Continuous Improvement explicitly their “first pillar”.
Learnings sofar
What I learned from this additional information is:
- The order is important
- The order is not obvious
So, I hope I made a case here, the question “what comes first” is a relevant one. There must be good reasons why from 2007 onward Toyota consistently mentions Continuous Improvement as their first pillar and Respect for People second.
My experiments
Based on this information I decided to do some experiments. I made a presentation about this topic and presented it at various occasions. I would start with a little introduction about “The Toyota Way 2001” and the two pillars. After that I would pop the question;
What comes first?
The answers came in three categories:
- Less than 5% thinks Continuous Improvement comes first
- About 50% think Respect for People comes first
- About 50% think it does not matter, both are equally important.
Learnings so far
So, I already learned that in the beginning the order for Toyota was not so obvious, at least not to everyone in the company. Now I learned that the order is not obvious for many “lean interested people” and also that most people take a different turn than Toyota took since 2007.
Reflection
I think that, in order to understand Lean better, it is important to understand “The Toyota Way 2001” better. What I would like to understand is why Toyota now references Continuous Improvement consistently as their first pillar and Respect for People as their second pillar. There must be good reasons for it!
Maybe these reasons can show us the way to more success with our own improvement efforts…
So my next question to you all is:
Why do you think Continuous Improvement comes first?