GA 238 | How to Change Your Culture with Toyota Kata with Emiel van Est

If you're talking about challenges and about dreams, it's about tapping into this aspirational side of people. And if you don't, there will never be continuous improvement.

Lean thinkers often use Peter Drucker's famous quote, culture eats strategy for breakfast to reinforce why a company's culture is extremely important as it relates to continuous improvement success. And while Mr. Drucker's quote is quick and easy to say, building and sustaining a strong company culture is far from quick and easy. This is why I'm excited to welcome Emile Van Ness to the show. Emil has been practicing lean for many years and has focused much of his work on culture building. Today, Emil and I talk about many different topics, including how the improvement in coaching kata can help companies continuously improve and respect people. We then get into some unexpected conversation related to Elon Musk homeostasis and why changing a company culture may not take quite as long as many expect. Show notes for this episode, which will include links to everything we discuss, can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 2, 3, 9. You can also check out Gemba Academy's Lee Learning System over at gembaacademy.com with a fully functional trial. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to. Welcome to the show. Emil. How are you?

I'm fine, thank you. How are you?

Oh, doing great, thank you. It's Friday here in Texas, and so where are you calling from?

I'm calling from the Netherlands. Appeldorn is the city I live in.

Okay, very good, very good. I know it's the evening time for you there, so thank you for being flexible. I appreciate that. So. Well, Emil, I know you listen to the show, and how we like to get started is with a. With a quote. So you have one that you'd like to share?

Yeah, I have one. I don't know exactly who's. It's regularly attributed to Peter Drucker, but that's not for sure. It's for him, but it's about culture eats strategy for breakfast. That's my quote for you today.

Yeah. What does that mean to you?

What it means is that if we don't address cultural changes needed in our continuous improvement efforts, that it's very likely that we will fail.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, Emil, tell us a little bit about your background, how you first got introduced to continuous improvement, and then tell us what you're up to these days.

For me, it started about 20 years ago. We had a client that had an issue. They could produce or they could sell More printers than they could produce. And that was Hewlett Packet. And somehow I got asked to. To help them out. And we did some fabulous things. We broke a world record. And the people that we worked with were quite enthusiastic about our experiments. So I thought, I want more of those days in my life. So I start looking for more opportunities into that direction and stopped over time, I stopped my engineering work, and at some point I started reading, and I found out that the things that I've been doing had a name, and it was called Lean. So there it goes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what was the world record?

The world record was that we produced in one shift, 812 printers, where it was thought to be impossible in one shift on one line. And when we started, we made about 250 per shift.

Wow. Wow. It's amazing how yet that first breakthrough and then it just opens up. Right? You know.

Yeah, it was a great discovery. I mean, I found out that I have a talent for something.

Yeah. Well, that's fantastic. Fantastic. All right, well, I'm really excited to talk about our topic today. And it's going to be kind of a mixture of culture, Toyota Kata, and everything else in between. So I guess what I want to start with, Emil, is just at a high level. We hear the word culture a lot, but what is. I think, one of my favorite definitions of. I think it's Herb Kelly here from Southwest Airlines says culture is what people do when no one's looking. You know, something like that. But, like, if someone asks you to kind of define culture to begin with, like, what would you say? Like, what is a culture?

Yeah, that's a tough question. I think culture can either be sensed from the outside or felt from the inside. It's about the way you do things and how you, in return, react to it. So if you're at an organization where people have a certain sense of what's going on there and interpret that and react to that, then you get the dynamics that gets the buzz in the organization, so to say. Yeah, I think it's about that bus. What does it feel like to work here? And how do others perceive it to. Hey, what are you doing, guys?

Yeah, yeah, no, I like that. I like that. Yeah, because, you know, could have all different kinds of cultures. Right? You could have a culture of, you know, competitiveness or a culture of, you know, corruption even. Right. You know, it could be anything, so.

Could be anything. Yeah, anything.

So why do you think culture is such an important topic we lean thinkers need to be addressing?

Well, if you think about it, the term lean is about 30 years old now, right? It was first coined in 88.

Yeah. Gosh, when you said that, I was like, no, not that log. And then. Well, yeah, I guess it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it was in the book. Yeah, it was to how to. To describe how. What people the investigators saw at Toyota. And I think till this day we are still talking about Toyota. It's still our main example. And people that have been working in the field that I've been talking with, there's something with the culture that we can get right. And I hear that over and over and over again. So that's why I think it's an important topic.

Yeah, yeah. So what's been your involvement with the Toyota Kata movement?

Quite a bit. I first read the book in 2010 and it gave me so much insight and confirmation about my experiences so far that I thought, I'm not gonna. No, I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but this is my, my way forward. So I've devoted the past eight years of my life promoting Toyota Kata here in the Netherlands and abroad. In the meantime, I became a publisher of the Dutch translation. So I published. Currently there are two Toyota Kara books in the Netherlands and distribute it. So that's. And I've been teaching people here in the Netherlands and abroad about Toyota Kata.

Yeah, great, great, great. Actually, yesterday I did a kata in a classroom workshop with some seven year olds.

I saw something on LinkedIn.

Yeah, it was so fun. It was so fun. Yeah, the kids had a great time. Yeah. So awesome. Where do you see culture in Toyota Kata interacting with one another?

Well, I think if you, if you look at how Toyota Kata is presented, it's presented as. So we have these two routines. We have the improvement kata and we have the coaching kata. And by practicing them, we change our mindset. And if enough people in the organization change their mindset, culture will change. That's the storyline, so to say, from Toyota Kata. So there is this connection, okay. We need to change the way we do things. We need to change the way we think. And if you do that collectively, we expect the result to be a cultural change.

Yeah, no, totally agree. I mean, and I think it begins right, with this so called starter Kata where, you know, it's more, you know, reading from the card, if you will, in the beginning and just follow the plan. But then eventually, you know, new neural pathways are developed. Right. And new ways of thinking, new habits. Right. Are created through this deliberate practice. And then before too long, I Guess. Well, maybe I don't know how long before sometime depending on the organization, you know, everyone begins to think this way. Right. And yeah, I really agree.

So actually I think that's the assumption. I have a different take on it now.

What's your take?

My take is I've been thinking about culture quite a bit in the past times, past years and actually Mike Roto put me on this path because he has a slideshare somehow somewhere on slideshare where he says there is something with challenge within the Toyota Way 2001. So I've been digging in there and if you look at the Toyota by 2001, there are those two pillars. So there is the pillar of continuous improvement and there is this pillar of respect for people. And if we look at Toyota Kata, we have the improvement kata and we have the coaching car. Could it be that with the improvement kata we practice the continuous improvement pillar of the Toyota Y 2001? I think you might agree with that.

Yeah, sure, sure.

So could it be that we, with the coaching car we actually practice respective respectful way of interacting with co workers. And so I think it's no coincidence that there are two routines and that there are two pillars in the tail the way 2001. So I think Toyota Kata is a way to practice the cultural elements that Toyota identified to be critical to their success.

Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm not, I've not thought of it that way but. But no, I agree. You know, I almost liken Toyota Kata and this is a simplistic explanation, but as more of a horse. And you know, because a lot of, you know, there's been some discussion as well. But I do a three or I do practical problem solving or I'm Six Sigma guy, I do damaic. Can I do Toyota Kata? Well, of course you can. I think to me Toyota Kata is the horse that pulls the cart full of methodologies, tools, whatever you want to talk about. But you know, doing 5s in and of itself is okay, I guess. But why are you doing it right? You know, like what purpose is it? What problem are you trying to solve? And this has been the age old dilemma I think with continuous and premium practitioners is that sometimes we, we really good at this so called point Kaizen, right where we go around and we make little things better but the whole system overall really hasn't improved. And I think when you set this challenge, you know, and I don't know, I just, I'm a huge believer obviously, you know, and, and I do, I do like your Your analogy of the, of the two pillars. So if you look at just continuous improvement overall, like just a Toyota kata, whatever you want, but just culture of continuous improvement, what does that look like to you? What does a CI culture look like?

I think if we look at the Toyota 2001, we find all the elements that we need. Toyota put in two and a half years work under the lead of the then President, Mr. Chow to identify these cultural elements. So in the, in the introduction of the Toyota Bay 2001, Mr. Chow, in this booklet we have identified and defined the company's fundamental DNA which summarizes the unique and outstanding elements of our company culture and success. So, and Toyota made this because they found that in the 80s, Toyota went out, went abroad and they started producing outside of Japan. And initially their teachings were, in a way, they were implicit. They sent out managers from Japan to the US to teach. But over time, Toyota grew bigger and bigger outside of Japan and the number of teachers that they could send from Japan were getting fewer and fewer. So they needed a way more explicit way of what is it that they were teaching. And I think that was the starting point for this effort to define those elements. And I think if we go to the roots, if we want to understand Toyota's success, I think we should study what Toyota wrote in this booklet.

So give us one or two things that really stand out from that booklet to you that you haven't already mentioned.

Yeah, so these are the two pillars, Continuous improvement and respect for people. And it is broken down in five keywords. And those five keywords are challenge, kaizen, genshi, kenbutsu, which comprise the first pillar, which is the foundation of the first pillar. And respect for people is broken down into respect and teamwork. And if you look at the one that stands out for me the most is their definition of challenge. And they write for challenge. We form a long term vision, meeting challenges with courage and creativity to realize our dreams.

What do you think Toyota's dreams are?

You could look at. Toyota has a current challenge. It's a challenge 2050, where they want to, I'm paraphrasing now from my mind, but they want to go to zero emissions with their plans and with the cars that they manufacture. So that's one of the big dreams that Toyota currently is working on in 2050. It's a bit long term, I guess.

How would you contrast, say, I don't know, Elon Musk or somebody like that with a leader of Toyota? Is it very different?

It's a very different person, but I.

Think And I don't mean to pick on Mr. Musk, but just maybe Tesla, that movement, Right. Yeah.

Right. I think there's a great connection with what Mr. Elon Musk is doing and what Toyota is doing. I think if you look at Elon Musk, what he is doing again and again, he's articulating dreams. He's very articulate in his dream about going to Mars, and he's very articulate about we need to accelerate the energy transition. And by being very articulate about it, he attracts people that have the same dream, and then amazing things happen.

Now, what's interesting, though, is he is obviously has a very different way of running a company than, say, Toyota. Right. You know, with the employees and, you know, I don't know a lot about the company, but it seems. Seems quite different. I. I don't know. Did you hear. I happened to hear there's a podcast with this crazy guy, Joe Rogan, and he had Elon Musk on. Very controversial over here, at least in the States. He smoked marijuana at the end on that, you know, so, so, but, but yeah, they were talking a lot about Mars and talking about building tunnels under California. And, you know, so I'm wondering, like, what's the future of the way we move about, you know, are we going to be, you know.

Yeah. With this hyperloop.

Yeah. This really interesting. So I wonder, like, even with Toyota, it's like, is there going to be just some incredible innovation that even they miss? You know, I don't know. I don't know.

I think it's not so much about missing an innovation. I think it's way more about thinking about the change you want to see in the world and then find a path to that.

Yeah. I guess what I mean by missing innovation is you can look at the cellular phone industry, you know, and one day used to be Motorola, right? And then next thing you know, this Finnish company comes out of nowhere and takes over and Motorola is gone. And. And now the Finnish company, nobody even knows the name Nokia, at least in the States, you know, and. And now it's Al. Apple, right? And so I don't know, there's this certain key, you know, I worked at Motorola, you know, and I remember standing there and. And all these people stood up and asked the big executives what happened. And the guy said, we made a major mistake, you know, with this digital versus analog and this and that. So I guess that's what I mean is, you know, will we even drive in cars in 2050, right. Or are we just going to transport ourselves around some other way.

Right. And that's the way that Toyota describes also their. They're not talking so much about cars. I think it's more about transport or connecting people or moving people. Those are the terms that they are using. Yeah, just, just this week I saw they launched a concept to work to bring the hospital to people.

Yeah, yeah. It's going to be interesting to follow, that's for sure.

Absolutely sure.

So. So talk. Let's get back to the whole CI culture. What can we do as there's a bunch of lean thinkers listening to this right now, what can we do to practice to become better, you know, practitioners of continuous improvement to help foster that. That culture?

I think if you look at, I paraphrase this definition of challenge, for example, and you could, you could question yourself, are we, do we have a challenge or are we defending status quo? That's a question that you can ask yourself in every meeting. What are we doing? Are we meeting this challenge with courage or are we showing some different kind of behavior? So I think if you look at the keywords in the definitions that Toyoda presents there, there are multiple entry points to start thinking, hey, if this is critical, what are we doing and what could we do to make a change there if necessary?

No, I think that's a really profound statement. Do we even have a challenge? Right? Have we even identified a challenge or, you know, you just want to keep going sideways, you know, and not. Not down?

Yeah, it happened a few years ago. I started wondering, this is, I mean, this is the big question for me for a long time already, why is it so difficult to make continuous improvement continuous? And a few years ago, I started sensing some stuff there because I started asking about, where do you want to go? And my question came something like, okay, you want continuous improvement. You have all this stuff and. And you say, we want to continuous improve. And I ask, okay, give me your definition of an improvement. What does good look like? When is it better? And to my astonishment, I met silence. Many times people don't have a clear shared understanding of what good looks like or what better looks like. And understanding the direction is the first step of the kata, of the improvement katana. So if there is no clear understanding and clear shared understanding of what the changes that you want to create together, then many of the efforts within the. With continuous improvement is like going through the motions.

Yeah. You know, I've often wonder also, when you think about, like science, like, like our bodies, you know, there's this thing is homeostasis, right. It's just a tendency towards this stable equilibrium. Right. And so our, our bodies. And at least in speaking in Fahrenheit here is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Right. This is where our bodies want to stabilize. I sometimes wonder if just a human person. We want just stability, you know, we want stability. We're not so, you know, if we need to improve, we will. If we need to lose a little weight, let's lose a little weight. But. But maybe we're okay. So let's just keep it stable. You know, it's almost like it's in our DNA. Right. To have this equilibrium. And sometimes I wonder if that also is what makes it hard for us to continuously press for improvement. Right. And to never be satisfied. I don't know.

Yeah, that's interesting. I think there are two sides there. I think our brain is designed to keep us safe. So that's. So if you're safe, why move on the other end? People ventured out there. There was a guy called Columbus. He went out to his boat and went west. I think there is also an adventurous sight in people that. And why are we looking for life beyond Earth? I mean, there is this quest of exploration that's also part of human nature. And I think what if you're talking about challenges and about dreams, it's about tapping into this aspirational side of people. And if you don't, there will never be continuous improvement.

Yeah. Back to Simon Sinek in your why, right? What's your why? What's your purpose? And without that purpose, without that why, just living life in general can be challenging, right?

Yeah. You can be okay. Yeah. But is it fun? Yeah, yeah. Satisfy your life. How will you look back at your life? I was okay or I don't know.

Yeah, no, exactly, exactly, exactly. Yeah, we really interesting conversation here. It's kind of going all over the place, but I'm having fun. What do you think? Back to culture. How long does it take, you'd think, to change a culture? Maybe we have a culture of mediocrity and we want to achieve a good culture. Not great, just good. From mediocre to good. How long will that take?

That's the million dollar question, isn't it? I think the hypothesis is that it will take ages. But there are a few examples where it can actually take only 12 months or a year or so. That's not the same. 18 months, something like that. For example, if you look at the Nummi plant, what happened there? It was a General Motors plant. It wasn't a Very great one at the time, Toyota took over. Took over the management, but it was the same plant, it were the same people, and if I'm correctly informed, it's within a year, it was the best plans of General Motors.

Yeah.

So it can be pretty quick.

I think the. I guess that maybe the. The key there for. For NUMI was. Was leadership. Right. And. And coaching and. And direction. So. Yeah. So maybe if we have. Maybe if we want to go from mediocre to. To good or to great, we need to not necessarily change the leadership, but change the way our leadership is leading. Right. And. And maybe this little thing called Toyota Kata could help, Right?

Maybe. Maybe.

Yeah.

And so at the NUMI plant, it was actually a change of leadership because Toyota took over the leadership of the plant. Right. So if you can create that kind of leadership within the leaders of the organization. Yeah, well, I don't know how to do that yet, but I'm still working on that.

Well, you figure it out. We'll have you back on the podcast and you tell everybody.

That takes some time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really good. Hey, so, Emil, kind of the last question to wrap things up, maybe I'll ask you to share some final words of wisdom. But before then, say there's someone listening to this right now that's just beginning their lean journey, and they're trying to. Maybe just trying to get some traction within their organization. Are there a few practical tips you can give them?

If I could start right now, I would start with culture. So culture, or maybe just with tapping into the aspiration, what do you want to achieve? And then ask something like, and what do you need for that? So if it's a small one, you don't need a team. But if your aspirations are big, it's obvious that you need to work with a bigger team.

Yeah.

All right, so if you need a bigger team, how do you want to interact with them and build it from there?

I like it. Do you have any final words of wisdom that you'd like to share with folks, Emil?

Maybe the famous Toyota quote, before we build cars, we built people.

What's that mean to you?

What it means is that I think the past 30 years, we had a big focus on the technical side of lean, and I think we should transform that. We should start with the people. Because if you look at continuous improvement, continuous improvement implies that there is continuous energy to improve. Where does that energy come from? That can only come from people.

Yeah. Well, and it used to be that sometimes we would try to change his culture with you know, three lean experts or some black belts or whatever it might be. And it was a small group of people who went about trying to change a culture. And I just think this is next to impossible. Right.

Yeah.

You can have pockets of excellence, perhaps, and you can make some improvements along the way, but to really, really change the culture, you know, deep inside an organization's heart, we have to reach every single person. Right? From the CEO down to the. To the frontline operator. Right?

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

And it starts somewhere with leadership.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, good stuff, Good stuff. So, Emil, if folks want to. To connect with you, what's the. The best way?

I'm on. I'm on LinkedIn. I have the Toyota Carter NL website. I have Lean Management NL website. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, and go ahead and spell your name for everyone in case they're only listening.

So my name is Emil. E, M, I, E, L. And then fan, like a car with V, A, N, and then in space and then est.

Okay, got it, got it. And we'll put everything in the show notes. This will be episode 238. So that'll be GembaPodcast.com, go to episode 238. And you can read Toyota Kata in Dutch. That's great.

You can. If you can read Dutch, you can.

I love it. I love it. That's so cool. All right. Hey, do you ever get over to any of the conferences here in the States or anything like that?

No, I tend to stay on this side of the ocean.

Yeah. Okay. All right, well, next time I come over to the Netherlands, I'll look you up and we'll go have some good Dutch beer.

Awesome. Awesome.

All right.

Look forward to that.

All right, well, thank you again for. For coming on after hours. I really appreciate it, Emil. Keep up the great work, and hopefully we can connect again someday soon.

Looking forward.

All right, Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye.

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