A Book Review of Toyota Culture; The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way

Toyota Culture; The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way (2008) by Jeffrey Liker and Michael Hoseus gives readers amazing insight and appreciation for how Toyota is run. More companies should treat their customers and employees with such respect as Toyota does. As impressive a book as Toyota Culture is, the level of detail the book provides obscures the lessons being taught.

Two of the main themes that run through the business is respect and continuous improvement. The goal of Toyota is to produce a flawless car, and they continue to strive to achieve this through continuous refinement of the manufacturing process which speeds and simplifies the process. It is the culture of the company, and relationships between management and production staff that drive this improvement.

Toyota staff go through rigorous evaluation to become an employee. Once an employee, Toyota works to maintain them as an employee through good working conditions, a strong development program, but most essentially is the philosophy Toyota takes towards its employees. They consider them employees for life, and encourage a culture of continuous improvement in staff with the guarantee that they will not "improve them selves out of a job". They engage staff at all levels in the improvement of the company and work to keep a healthy motivated workforce.

Toyota Culture would have benefited from more discussion of some of the tougher issues Toyota faced during their transition to the United States, such as trade issues and unionization. Less than three pages of the nearly 600 are spent discussing their approach to the union. In the face of unionism, Toyota has maintained that they have a culture and a way to manage that will be done regardless of the union. It would have rounded the discussion had there been more discussion about how they resolved involvements with the unions or other labor relations issues. There was very little discussion about how they approached and overcame difficulties in bringing the business to America or a specific plant location.

Sadly. so much of my amazement about Toyota is lost in the detail that the book provides. I anticipated a business book of examples and "how too's" on instilling the same ethos in other businesses. What I found was far more detail than I anticipated, or wanted. Toyota Culture needs a condensed version which focus' on the broader narrative behind the philosophy and culture at Toyota. The detail that it provides may be of interest to some, but was more than most business readers are going to want to know. Though providing chapter summaries and "Key Points to consider for your company" it is not a manual for another company to follow. There are many lessons to be learned, but sadly, so much gets lost among the minutia.