"Unintended acceleration" in Toyotas is mostly driver error

Since Toyota is one of the best-known antecedents of radical management, and the pre-eminent practitioner of most of its precepts, I was naturally concerned during the period from August 2009 to February 2010, when "Toyota" became a synonym for cars that wouldn't stop.

In my forthcoming book, The Leader's Guide to Radical Management (Jossey-Bass, October 2010), I discuss the Toyota experience in depth and conclude that although Toyota had deviated from its own principles in not getting to the root causes of real problems (sliding floor mats, sticky pedals), the escalation of a major problem into a full-scale corporate crisis was to a large extent a failure of leadership communication.

 I predicted that Toyota would be largely exonerated from most of the exaggerated claims and lawsuits as to how unsafe its cars are.

 Today the Wall Street Journal is reporting that a new study by the US Department of Transportation has indeed concluded that almost all the cases it has investigated have been due to driver error, i.e. the driver had the foot on the accelerator, thinking it was the brake.

 Toyota is not entirely innocent. It did ignore real problems for some years, which is the antithesis of its fifty year history of getting to root causes of all problems immediately.

 What the experience shows is not that radical management doesn't work or that Toyota is a bad company. Rather it shows that radical management is a matter of implementing certain principles. When a firm implements those principles, it does well. When it deviates from those principles, it gets into trouble.

The organizations that I cite in the book as examples of firms implementing radical management are organizations that have embarked on journeys. They are all at different stages of the journey. None of them has in any permanent sense “arrived.” Toyota is an example—and not the only example—of a company that implemented most of the principles for a long period, and then lost its way. Implementing the principles of radical management requires constant energy and attention.

I believe Toyota is getting back on track. When CEO Akio Toyoda returned to Japan on February 28, 2010, after his grilling by the U.S. Congress, he held a rally for Toyota employees. He wore a gray workman's jacket, and in a voice wracked with emotion, he told two thousand assembled workers and a far greater audience that was gathered in front of live television monitors around the world, "Let's go with high spirits, have fun, and be confident while staying humble. We are making a new start today."

High spirits, fun, confidence, humility. Time will tell, but this is beginning to sound like a radical manager.