You Can’t Buy It.. July 20, 2007
Posted by admin in : Uncategorized , add a commentLove the ‘In Business‘ podcast series on BBC Radio 4 – loads of great lessons.
The latest edition is about the car industry and together with James Womack (of ‘The Machine That Changed The World’ fame) and it puts out a great potted history of the industry.
It details the decline of detroit and the rise of Japan culmninating in Toyota reaching the number one spot.
Couple of great things in there:
1. the description of the symbiotic relationships of the big players in the marketplace – how General Motors and Ford needed the poorly performing Chrysler in the marketplace to gain balance and they priced for it with General Motors then making massive profits.
2. The fact that all of Toyota’s supposed competitive advantage is out there in the public realm. Toyota are completely open about their systems and approaches yet no other player comes near it for efficiency?
The latter point is the most powerful for me – you can’t buy the excellence that runs in the core of Toyota, you cannot implement its shiny processes or read books about it and expect to get this into your corporation at any speed.
It all works for Toyota in the ecosystem of its culture and values, putting in lean manufacturing etc. will be nothing but a bolt on exercise if these fundamentals are not addressed.
How can we address them – I suppose its down to deep cultural surgery that takes years or setting free some of the business as a skunk works for how the future might be.