well as effective countermeasures. When you have stable processes, and waste
and inefficiencies are publicly visible, you have an opportunity to continually
learn. But learning happens through people, and it is also necessary to have sta-
bility of personnel, slow promotion, and very careful succession systems to pro-
tect the organizational knowledge base. Learning means moving forward and
building on your past rather than starting over with each new project... and
each new manager.
Westerners seem to see criticism as something negative and self-admission
of our limitations as a sign of weakness. It is just the opposite within Toyota.
The greatest sign of strength is when an individual can openly identify things
that did not go right, along with “countermeasures” to prevent these things
from happening again. Hanseiis a broader concept in Japan, which is not pecu-
liar to Toyota. Parents may ask their children to reflect when they have done
something wrong. It implies that you feel bad about your shortcomings and
vow to never make the same mistake again. Even after a successful vehicle
launch, Toyota engineers take time to reflect on shortcomings of the program
they just completed and develop countermeasures so they will not make the
same mistakes again. Hansei is an attitude and philosophy, which is at the core
ofkaizen,or continuous improvement.
How to Use This Book
Writing a fieldbook on the Toyota Way is itself a challenging task. As we noted
earlier, in some ways it seems to run counter to the Toyota philosophy of learn-
ing by doing. And it seems to imply that it is possible to follow simple lessons
and recipes. What we are in fact trying to do is offer some of the lessons we learned
through trying to help companies become lean learning organizations. A lean
learning organization seeks to achieve its objectives with minimum waste by
continually getting better. The best sports teams get a little better every day—
from practice, from games, and from reflecting on tapes. No athlete is ever done
learning. And no organization should ever be finished learning and improving.
Toyota is always far from where it wants to be.
We hope this book will inspire, provide useful tips, make some lightbulbs
go on, and even lead to direct application. But it is just a book. The real learn-
ing takes place every day. The real lessons are life lessons. If we motivate you to
try some things differently, to reflect a little bit more on some life lessons, to put
a few of the concepts you have learned into a broader perspective, we will con-
sider ourselves successful. In any case, you can be certain that we will practice
hanseito reflect on ways that we can correct any shortcomings and to improve
our abilities in the future. We hope that you will do the same. We wish you all
the best on your lean learning journey.