The Day Toyota Stopped Hiring for Character

Toyota today is recalling over 8 million vehicles worldwide. Toyota will take years to reclaim the trust they worked so hard to build.

Toyota is a great company. Maybe “was” is more correct. It’s manufacturing culture is so pervasive, industrial tourism became an industry. Manufacturing executives on tour busses rolled into Toyota city for a plant tour and a lecture so Toyota’s genius can be transplanted into their home companies, in all industries, back in Canada and the USA. The TMS, or Toyota Manufacturing System was written about in Harvard Business Review for ten or more years. TMS lead the quality movement.

The secret to TMS was culture, character, work ethic, integrity, and it produced a car and a company that eventually became bigger and more profitable than General Motors. Then somebody at Toyota started hiring for skills and forgot about character. How do I know that?

Here’s the story. A Saskatchewan lawyer has launched a class action lawsuit based on the premise that an electronic safety measure, which ensured gas pedals could not stick, which is used by every other major car manufacturer, was left out of Toyota cars deliberately. Furthermore, the fix-it patch was a low tech mechanical work around and not a solution. He’s not alone, there are several other USA driven class action suits based on the same idea.


At some point in the Toyota hierarchy somebody made the decision to take the easy route and leave out the safety measure. That somebody lacked integrity or character, or both because it was a values based decision. That lack of values is taking down a great company. Somebody hired that guy! Somebody interviewed him. Somebody said, “put him charge of ethical decisions.”


The old, great Toyota company would never have hired this guy, or taken the manufacturing shortcut. At some point character became second to the numbers.

Hire like the old Toyota. Hire for character. It may save your company.

See you at breakfast,

Wolfgang

P.s. The two facts that stick out are; 8 million cars recalled and it’s not over, and the absence of an industry norm safety device. If all 8 million people can be corralled to sue, it doesn’t matter if they’re wrong. Toyota will still lose and that’s a sad thing.

P.s. Funny, “more dogs than bones.”