Without The Enemy Within

After working for over a decade as TPS/LSS in Japan (Toyota Production System/ Lean Six Sigma), functioning daily as a Japanese in top management at Japan's 14th largest company, I can tell you that The Real Secret is that the HEART of the person is the key to every productivity advancement.

We in the west are always on a quest to discover some new understanding or inner secret. We compare our novel understandings to the magical Toyota baseline. When that morphs into a new understanding we run to shout to the world our re-calibrated perceptions.

But we're using a flawed measure.

I can tell you firsthand that 'the secret' is not a system or a process or tool or development... instead, we in the west need more need to understand the core REASON why a vaunted worker does what they do; focus on what is in their heart. Accordingly, we need to hire those who have "it" instead of hiring people willy-nilly because they're a quota minority, or turning a blind eye to their morality. Inner thinking and outer actions impact performance. You cannot do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

We in the west feel all fuzzy when we hire some "protected class" who are otherwise on a course of self-destruction and wonder why our team doesn't function correctly. So we put up a 5S poster (heralding some quality process improvement) and cross our fingers. Instead, we need workers who have the heart (and understanding and will) to turn off the lights during lunchtime, or who work to save an account NOT because they're going to make overtime, or because "it's a big account," but because they WANT their company to succeed in the smallest matters.

Those are the people who constantly think "'Good enough' never is."

Before poo-poo-ing all to think everyone is the same; that we can keep our spate of feel-good diversity measures, note that this kind of heart is 110% invested not in Equality, but in Quality. Focus, Pinky, Focus! People are different-- treat them as such. Evaulate their quality of life; test their quality of personal decisions; understand the quality of their personal standards. Select people who are LOYAL (new word?) not only towards their company, their bosses, their products, their customers, etc., because their core desire becomes the well-spring of true quality, flowing without compulsion. Find people whose desire comes not from a paycheck, but from knowing their company will NOT lay them off in hard times (contrast Novell's idiocy in hiring 800 and firing 800 on a quarterly basis, or other American companies who act towards their employees like some rabid dog waiting to take a bite).

For years my co-workers and I watched short-sighted Americans come to Japan to frenetically in a week (ha! in a day!!) try to "learn why" the Japanese ate our lunch. I learned long ago that it's not the system or the process (although that helps)-- it's the will and the mind of the hire that matters most. Finding, hiring, and maintaining that type of tender heart (maintaining it at all costs) not only "produces quality" in their work, but it's a circular flow that goes to the employee. It maintains their loyalty, retains their trust, nurtures their will to work, and harnesses camaraderie... which all resides within the heart of the worker.

"If there's no enemy within, the enemy without can do you no harm." (Les Brown)

Cheers
Lee

The Eyesight of an Eagle and the Vision of a Clam

Today's headlines of Ford's violent thrashing and gasping to cope with slumping sales saddens me. It's not news, but business as usual.

While I have no love for planned obsolescence in engineering, Ford and all their Tier1's are fellow countrymen. I feel coming tensions in their marriages, see the faces of their pained children, and watch the encroaching reality of foreclosures, just because the dingleberries in management can't get it right.

I think back on my own experiences working in Asia, and wish others could see what I saw.

Let me explain...

"Tom" Tsutomu Narita of the huge international electronics company, Omron Corporation, hired me to work in Japan in 1980s. A young engineer fresh out of Brigham Young University, I had no real idea of the fortunes that lay ahead. Yes, riches and fame and success et cetera came my way during the next decade, but far more valuable were simple lessons of humanity in business. Lessons drawn from something as simple and as deep as not wantonly crushing the ant that walks past just because 'you can.'

For example, Omron experienced extremely hard times in the mid- and late 1980s. The worldwide depression downturns lasted for years. My western experience told me to worry about being laid off. Omron still sold around US$1Billion annually, but profit margins ranged from 1% to 3% for many heart-stopping quarters.

But President Yoshio Tateishi (also written Tateisi) with founder and aged Chairman Kazuma Tateishi stated that "ALL would stay– workers were as family. As the company fared, so would all," they said.

So I became part of an astounding show of support.

When 25,000+ workers in 40 factories around the world making over 100,000 electronic products showed their sincere appreciation by putting 'shoulders to the wheel’ with voluntary overtime, extra-mile service, ZERO defects (not a concept-- a reality), and even sometimes foregone paychecks, Omron prospered, becoming the 10th to 15th largest company in Japan.

Oh yes, we invested– gladly– to support the leaders who similarly cared for us.

Smirk all you like, but it happened because we felt loved, wanted, and valued... and somewhat secure. Times were rough but virtually no one was cut. And so everyone worked smarter AND harder, and results arrived.

Back to Ford for a moment longer: For those mis-trained in western ways of quarterly profits, easy layoffs, middle-management house-cleaning (and the idiotic practice of asking high-school-grade dimwits to run HR), all I can say is companies reap what they sow. In business, Ford's laughable 'Bold Moves' show that Americans often have the eyesight of an eagle and the vision of a clam. It's not about CARS, people, it's about PEOPLE, people.

The lesson is this: “Human Resources” isn’t a euphemism.

Tom Narita showed how to treat employees right, and I wish we'd dare make such bold moves in our culture.

Cheers