Take a walk in the business books aisle in any bookstore and you ll see numerous books on Toyota and their management policies under the ’leadership’ and ‘management’ sections. Toyota, with their innovative management style, created a revolution in the art of organizational management. Their style was lauded as the best thing to have happened to the management world and organizations all over the world started adopting their techniques.
While the great benefits of the ‘Toyota Way’ can in no way be undermined, it is necessary that managers exercise caution before blindly adopting Toyota’s way of life. What is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander and managers need to properly evaluate, without bias and xenophobia, what they lack in their own management styles and how they can use the ‘Toyota Way’ in its entirety or mix their own management styles with that of Toyota to create a unique and innovative hybrid management style.
