Toyota Kata

"Toyota Kata gets to the essence of how Toyota manages continuous improvement and human ingenuity, through its improvement kata and coaching kata. Mike Rother explains why typical companies fail to understand the core of lean and make limited progress—and what it takes to make it a real part of your culture." —Jeffrey K. Liker, bestselling author of The Toyota Way "[Toyota Kata is] one of the stepping stones that will usher in a new era of management thinking." —The Systems Thinker "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 "Practicing the improvement kata is perhaps the best way we've found so far for actualizing PDCA in an organization." —John Shook, Chairman and CEO, Lean Enterprise Institute 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. With clear detail, an abundance of practical examples, and a cohesive explanation from start to finish, Toyota Kata gives executives and managers at any level actionable routines of thought and behavior that produce superior results and sustained competitive advantage.

Take the Kata path to scientific thinking and superior results! In this long-awaited companion to the groundbreaking book Toyota Kata, Mike Rother takes you to the next level of developing business mindset and capability for the 21st Century. Much more than a list of management concepts, The Toyota Kata Practice Guide walks you through the process of making improvement, adaptation, and even innovation routine behavior. Designed to help a coach (the manager) and a learner work together for developing new skillsets, The Toyota Kata Practice Guide delivers the information, insight, and frameworks you need to: * Form habits that help you solve problems and achieve challenging goals * Modify the thought patterns that drive your behavior* Develop an organizational mindset that drives superior results The Improvement Kata gives learners the means to experiment their way through obstacles and achieve tough goals; the Coaching Kata gives managers the means to accelerate and cement their people's learning. In the new age of business, increasing efficiency and decreasing costs is no longer the end game. A manager's job today is to develop patterns of thinking and acting in their people that lead to success with any challenge. Consistent, mindful practice is the best way to do it--and The Toyota Kata Practice Guide is the best way to get there.

Take advantage of your organization’s brainpower with Kata-driven continuous improvement “This is the first book I have read that provides a clear picture of what it takes to develop and mobilize creative capability across an organization, to achieve challenging goals.” Jeffrey K. Liker, author of The Toyota Way (from the Foreword) Nobody drives continuous improvement in real, tangible ways like Toyota, where everyone at every level works toward common, customer-related goals. At Toyota, continuous improvement is habitual. In his groundbreaking book Toyota Kata, Mike Rother revealed management practices that drive Toyota’s success in providing value to their customers. Now, Rother and coauthor Gerd Aulinger provide the routines and know-how for scaling these practices across your entire organization. It all builds on five simple foundational questions at every level: What is the target condition? What is the actual condition? What obstacles stand in the way of the target condition? What is the next step? What have you learned from taking that step? Illustrated cover to cover, Toyota Kata Culture helps you visualize exactly how these methods work—so you can start putting them into action right away. You’ll learn how to develop your own iterative process of trial and adjustment, build a deliberate, scientific-thinking culture that grows capability, and make aligned strategic continuous improvement part of everyday work. Achieve your goals and differentiate your organization by following the proven formula laid out in Toyota Kata Culture.

The biggest competitive advantage an organization can achieve comes from the synergies created by employees skilled in enhancing organizational dynamics. The Seven Kata: Toyota Kata, TWI, and Lean Training supplies time-tested tools and advice to help readers adapt to changing conditions and outcompete their rivals. It explains why a mix of the ski

Have you experienced initial success with your Agile change initiative but found that improvement seems to have plateaued? Did you set out to become Agile but failed to truly understand what it means across organizational levels beyond vague terms like "empowerment," "high-performance teams" and "trust"? Are improvement efforts based on projects or workshops but failing to become an integrated part of your daily work and culture? Are leaders not given the responsibility and framework to become active drivers of organizational improvement and are Scrum Masters acting more like facilitators than active improvement drivers? Are your improvement efforts grounded in reactive problem solving and good intentions but failing to deliver true and measurable results? All these questions indicate that there is a "missing link" between Agile and its Lean foundations: an underpinning of continuous improvement that so many Agilists want but rarely find they can execute. Toyota Kata provides this practical framework, the keystone of culture, that allows an organization to attain that elusive state of continuous improvement. This book is based on the last six years of experience working with Toyota Kata in an Agile setting, helping teams, departments, business units and organizations learn how to set ambitious and measurable improvement goals and work iteratively toward them. Applying Toyota Kata to the context of innovation and knowledge work requires us to rethink some of the original elements. To that end, the book is packed with examples and cases that allow you to move beyond abstract theoretical principles. You learn a lot from mistakes but not all mistakes must be repeated by everybody (and I have made many). "I find myself paying attention and learning again, and I encourage you to do so too."-Mike Rother, author of three books on Toyota Kata"My electronic copy of the book is full of marginal commentary and highlighted sections. I found so much here to absorb and apply."-Diana Larsen, Co-founder of the Agile Fluency Model and author"Inspiring, insightful and actionable alternative to the often failing agile transformations"-Tomas Eilsø, Enterprise SAFe coach"This book is by far the most comprehensive and thoughtful approach I have seen to applying Toyota Kata in Agile IT organizations. You will find yourself going back to this book over and over again to mine the treasure trove of experience and knowledge that Jesper has meticulously laid out. In my opinion this text will be regarded as a standard that both Agile practitioners and business leaders refer to in years to come."-Michael Blaha, Director of DevOps Provation Medical"Agile practitioners take note: By 'mastering' Scrum, Kanban, or SAFe you have taken the first step. Now, read this book to continue your journey!"-Adam Light, Lean & Agile Consultant and Speaker and Toyota Kata coach"This book brilliantly shows how to apply Toyota Kata in knowledge work. This is a must read for agile leaders"-Håkan Forss, Lean/Agile coach passionate about continuous learning and LEGO

FACING CHALLENGING GOALS AND UNPREDICTABLE PATHS? PRACTICE SCIENTIFIC THINKING! Your team’s ability to learn and adapt is paramount, and scientific thinking is the key to unlocking this invaluable skill. The bad news: It's not our natural default position as adults. The good news: There’s a simple and proven approach to developing it in any organization or team—including yours—called Toyota Kata. Professor Sylvain Landry lays out a straightforward management practice that enables each level of your organization to apply scientific ways of thinking and working, to achieve whatever goals you’re pursuing. “This book is that good!!! I can’t wait to have leaders read it! Sylvain shares his journey with Kata in a way that transported me into it. He brings a clear understanding and a powerful message on how to go about it, in a short and easy-to-read format. I consider this essential reading for anyone looking to start scientific-thinking practice in their organization.” – Tony Hren, Senior Director,Danaher Business System, Danaher Corporation “A practical and easily digestible book on Toyota Kata that’s perfect for our managers and their teams.” – Kasper Bødker Mejlvang, General Manager,Novo Nordisk Denmark & Iceland “If I'd had this book before I got into Kata it would have increased my understanding of how to get started. A great precursor to initial training and practice.” – Andrea Simpson, Senior Operations Director and Process Improvement, NEA Baptist Health System “As a leader of an organization, the challenge of improving is hard to sustain. This MUST-read book highlights how top organizations fuel their journey, and even enjoy the trip, by managers shepherding practice of scientific thinking in their teams.” – Dan Bergeron, President & CEO of SigmaPoint Technologies “A compact book every manager who wants to coach high performance should read. Take it along on your next flight.” – Professor Jeffrey Liker, author of the bestseller The Toyota Way “We develop many thinking habits at work, which makes the workplace the world’s largest classroom and managers its teachers. What skills and mindset are you conveying in your team? Read this book and realize how important your work with your team is.” – Mike Rother, author of the bestselling Learning to See,Toyota Kata and The Toyota Kata Practice Guide

"The process by which a company identifies, frames, acts and reviews progress on problems, projects and proposals can be found in the structure of the A3 process ... follow the story of a manager ... and his report ... which will reveal how the A3 can be used as a management process to create a standard method for innovating, planning, problem-solving, and building structures for a broader and deeper form of thinking - a practical and repeatable approach to organizational learning"--Publisher's description.

The definitive inside account of Toyota's greatest crisis—and lessons you can apply to your own company "Those who write off Toyota in the current climate of second guessing and speculation are making a profound mistake and need to read this book to get the facts. Toyota is a company that will channel the current challenges to push themselves to even more relentless continuous improvement." —Charles Baker, former Chief Engineer and Vice President for R&D, Honda of America "Toyota Under Fire is a superb book and should prove very helpful to American industry's understanding of the problems faced and how any company can prevent similar occurrences in the future." —Norman Bodek, author, founder of Productivity Press, and inductee in 2010 Industry Week Manufacturing Hall of Fame "As a former automotive supplier executive and student of Toyota, I was concerned to see the many negative reports and investigations into the quality and safety of its vehicles. Toyota Under Fire tells the story of how this great company is growing wiser and stronger by living its culture and values." —Michael Fisher, CEO, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center "Just as Toyota has put itself through excruciating soul-searching in order to understand what went wrong, so should we all take advantage of the opportunity for learning presented to us by Toyota's misfortune. In these pages, you will find that the actual circumstances were far more complex, nuanced, and uncertain than you saw reported in the news." —John Y. Shook, Chairman and CEO, Lean Enterprise Institute "The most comprehensive and detailed review to date of the circumstances that led to the crisis, and the events and contexts that caused it to escalate.” —Strategy & Business About the Book For decades, Toyota has been setting standards that are the envy—and goal—of organizations worldwide. Its legendary management principles and business philosophy, first documented by Jeffrey K. Liker in his influential book The Toyota Way, changed the business world's approach to operational excellence. Granted unprecedented access to Toyota's facilities worldwide, Liker, along with Timothy N. Ogden, investigated the inside story of how Toyota faced the challenges of the recession and the recall crisis of 2009–2010. In both cases, the company was caught off guard—and found that a root cause of the challenges it faced was its failure to live up to its own principles. But the fundamentals were still there, and the company has ultimately come out of the most challenging years of its postwar existence even stronger than before. Toyota Under Fire chronicles all the events of the recession and the recall crisis in detail, providing valuable lessons any business leader can use to survive and thrive in a crisis, no matter how large: Crisis response must start by building a strong culture long before the crisis hits. Culture matters far more than decisions made by top executives. Investing in people, even in the depths of a recession, is the surest path to long-term profitability. Because it had founded its culture on such principles, Toyota didn’t need to amass an army of public relations, marketing, and legal experts to "put out the fire"; instead, it redoubled efforts to live up to its founding tenet, going "back to basics." Toyota began solving this crisis more than 70 years ago, when its organizational culture was first established. Apply the lessons of Toyota Under Fire to your company, and you'll meet any future management challenge calmly, responsibly, and effectively—the Toyota Way.