People and Systems
Teresko's article refers to Morgan and Liker's "The Toyota Product Development System: Integrating People, Process And Technology". This book and Liker's "The Toyota Way" emphasize that a most important factor behind Toyota's success is the way they develop and value people. Indeed, 7 of the 13 points from Teresko's summary focus on people development and learning. Bassi and McMurrer, and also Landes, provide us with direct indicators or drivers of motivation and performance. Why, one might almost jump to the conclusion that people are critical to organizational success. Well, "Duh"!
At GP we are "people" people, but we're also process people, and when we are looking to improve motivation and performance at our Operational Excellence group, we usually put on our process spectacles. They are the ones that enable us to see for miles and miles, across value streams, through organizational boundaries, and along time series of customer-critical measures.
This serves us well when it comes time to work on problems. As our article summaries point out, not only the source of improvement, but also the root cause of problems, can invariably be found in people. But rather than focus on people errors (learning errors, memory lapses, inconsistency, application errors, omission errors, bad decisions), we focus on the processes that guide and encourage and limit people in doing what they do. By converging everyone's thinking on the system, on routine and improvement responsibilities, on driving the value stream, we avoid dwelling on individuals' shortcomings and look instead for ways that the organization can work as a learning whole to improve performance. We jump to the conclusion that normal people in a great system can do great things, like Toyota. Well, "Duh"!
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