Toyota Kata : Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results

How any organization in any industry can progress from old-fashioned management by results to a strikingly different and better way."
--James P. Womack, Chairman and Founder, Lean Enterprise Institute

"One of the stepping stones that will usher in a new era of management thinking."
--The Systems Thinker

This game-changing book puts you behind the curtain at Toyota, providing new insight into the legendary automaker's management practices and offering practical guidance for leading and developing people in a way that makes the best use of their brainpower.

Drawing on six years of research into Toyota's employee-management routines, Toyota Kata examines and elucidates, for the first time, the company's organizational routines--called kata--that power its success with continuous improvement and adaptation. The book also reaches beyond Toyota to explain issues of human behavior in organizations and provide specific answers to questions such as:

• How can we make improvement and adaptation part of everyday work throughout the organization?
• How can we develop and utilize the capability of everyone in the organization to repeatedly work toward and achieve new levels of performance?
• How can we give an organization the power to handle dynamic, unpredictable situations and keep satisfying customers?

Mike Rother explains how to improve our prevailing management approach through the use of two kata: Improvement Kata--a repeating routine of establishing challenging target conditions, working step-by-step through obstacles, and always learning from the problems we encounter; and Coaching Kata: a pattern of teaching the improvement kata to employees at every level to ensure it motivates their ways of thinking and acting.

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction : Transforming Our Understanding of Leadership and Management

Part 1 : The Situation
Chapter 1 : What Defines A Company That Thrives Long Term?

Part 2 : Know Yourself
Introduction to Part II
Chapter 2 : How are We Approaching Process Improvement?
Chapter 3 : Philosophy and Direction
Chapter 4 : Origin and Effects of Our Current Management Approach

Part 3 : The Improvement Kata : How Toyota Continuously Improves
Introduction to Part III
Chapter 5 : Planning : Establishing A Target Condition
Chapter 6 : Problem Solving and Adapting : Moving Toward A Target Condition
Summary of Part III

Part 4 : The Coaching Kata : How Toyota Teaches The Improvement Kata
Introduction to Part IV
Chapter 7 : Who Carries Out Process Improvement at Toyota?
Chapter 8 : The Coaching Kata : Leaders as Teachers
Summary of Part IV

Part 5 : Replication : What About Other Companies?
Chapter 9 : Developing Improvement Kata Behavior in Your Organization

Conclusion
Appendix A : Where Do You Start with The Improvement Kata?
Appendix B : Process Analysis
Bibliography
Index

Write a review