Preserving the Toyota/Google Way

A lot gets made over Google's struggles to maintain its corporate culture as it grows larger and more bureaucratic. Of course, it's not just Google -- it just happens to have grown from nimble startup to large corporation in the blind of an eye, so the changes are very pronounced and visible.

Another company with a well defined culture is Toyota, which is attempting to counteract the deleterious effects of size and bureaucracy. BusinessWeek:

How's this for strange? Toyota Motor (TM), the company that has the rest of the auto industry running scared, is worried. As new hires pour in and top executives approach retirement, the company fears it might lose the culture of frugality, discipline, and constant improvement that has been vital to its success. So management has launched a slew of education initiatives, and even uses a business school in Tokyo to teach Toyota to be, well, more like Toyota. "We are making every effort not to lose our DNA," says Shigeru Hayakawa, president of Toyota Motor North America.

Peek under the hood at Toyota and you start to understand why management is worried. Rapid growth has forced this most Japanese of companies to rely more and more on gaijin (foreigners) overseas. Top brass—the ones who transformed a lean upstart into a global powerhouse—are nearing retirement, to be replaced by a generation that has never had a bad day at the office. And in the past three years, Toyota has hired 40,000 workers new to the company's culture. "It isn't an immediate problem; it's like a metabolic disease you don't know you have before it's too late," says Tatsuo Yoshida, an analyst at UBS in Tokyo.

It just so happens that the company was recently slapped with a lawsuit that cuts at the core of the company's culture:

The California auto worker who is suing Toyota and others in a whistleblower lawsuit said Tuesday she was merely carrying out the quality-conscious "Toyota way" in spotting defects when managers cracked down on her efforts and demoted her.

...

The lawsuit accuses management at NUMMI of routinely deleting or downgrading defects that Cameron found as a certified auditor -- including broken seat belts, faulty headlights, inadequate braking and steering wheel alignment problems -- and demands $45 million in damages for retaliation against a whistleblower and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

"I believed in the Toyota way. I really did. I just wanted to know why they turned their head on me," Cameron said from California in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "Why did they look the other way when I cried out for help?"

Who knows if there's truth to the suit... it could just be a fired employee that new how to hit the company at a sore spot. And it is a major sore spot. Just check out all of the books about The Toyota Way and lean manufacturing... employee suggestion boxes are a key component to many of them. Getting fired for spotting defects? Taichi Ohno would be spinning in his grave, at a minimum.

Anyway, it would seem as though Toyota is interested in heading off its problems before the company is fully infected, which is good to see. But ultimately, nobody has really figured out the way to preserve a company's core culture in the face of size.

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