Drawing inspiration from the Toyota method to promote continuous improvement and corporate learning: this is what Sylvain Landry proposes. In his latest book, the HEC Montréal professor demonstrates that scientific thinking is the key to enabling teams to adapt and learn.
It is easier to claim to be a “learning organization” than to actually become one. Faced with this observation, Sylvain Landry proposes a simple method developed by Mike Rother, the Toyota Kata, to teach teams to think and act more scientifically.
A metaroutine
Want to get better results? Change your way of thinking! The key is to achieve your goals by developing an improvement metaroutine and receiving feedback from a coach. This is a new approach which, like a breath of fresh air, has proven itself. The proposed model is at the same time structured, supervised and transferable. Thus, the Toyota Kata routine has four steps:
- define the challenge and the direction to take;
- sketch the portrait of the current mode of operation;
- determining the new target mode;
- experiment to achieve this.
Tools, techniques and principles
Sylvain Landry explains what must be taken into consideration in a spirit of continuous improvement. So it is with the analysis of past experiences. Before you can even change ineffective work habits, you have to target the real problems and obstacles. Here, the professor warns the reader: “Many tools lean, or rather the models inherent in them, are desired destinations, not solutions in themselves. To successfully create a new culture of learning and continuous improvement, the Toyota Kata method recommends that one or two coaches guide the process of reflection and experimentation of the learner or stakeholders.
Deliberate practice
There is a big difference between repeating an action and developing a “deliberate practice” of that same action, in order to master it perfectly. Deliberate practice will be guided by an intention to improve and will be focused on specific goals. By developing new behaviors, we can improve performance, in particular by strengthening our “neural connections”, until these new habits are perfectly mastered. Sylvain Landry explains that perfecting a skill starts first and foremost with the body, which reproduces the different gestures to appropriate them rather than intellectualize them. This whole process begins even before we try to develop our own ways of doing things. This learning method has a name: shuhari, a concept from Japanese martial arts that means “following the rules, understanding the rules and transcending the rules”.
* This article is published thanks to a partnership with the magazine Management HEC Montrealwhere it first appeared.
Bringing Scientific Thinking to Life: An Introduction to Toyota Kata for Next-Generation Business Leaders
Sylvain Landry
JFD Editions
178 pages