Excerpts from an article by The Wall Street Journal.
Mr Toyoda and his allies have been saying openly that when he took the top job last year after a 15-year hiatus for the Toyoda clan, he inherited a company weakened by non-family predecessors who sacrificed quality for faster growth and fatter margins.
The problems arose when "some people just got too big-headed and focused too excessively on profit," Mr Toyoda said at a Beijing news conference in March. He acknowledged the "ultimate responsibility for mistakes... lies in me".
A week earlier, Jim Press -- once the top Toyota executive in the US before he jumped to a rival automaker -- issued a statement declaring: "The root cause of their problems is that the company was hijacked, some years ago, by anti-family, financially oriented pirates."
Those executives "didn't have the character to maintain a customer-first focus. Akio does," said Mr Press, who had a run-in with non-family Japanese bosses several years ago.
Highly recommended reading. In a way, in further confirms this author's believe that the root cause lies with Hiroshi Okuda and Katsuaki Watanabe's adopting very American management style of pursuing growth and to be very short term profit minded.
And again "Is Akio ducking criticism of being a beneficiary of nepotism by accusing us and trying to justify his ascendancy to the top job?" one of Mr Watanabe's top aides said. "One of our biggest social responsibilities is to generate profits and pay taxes. To criticise the company's effort to maximise profits and thus taxes is just complete nonsense." Again this is a very typical thing you would expect from GM, but certainly not from what most people would think of Toyota - the company that puts customer first, environment first, etc etc.
Meanwhile, back in FoMoCo's head office in Dearborn, Michigan, things are looking very good.
North American Dealers Association - Resale value of Ford increased by 23% in 2009, exceeding the industry average by 4%.
Ford records sharpest rise in quarterly market share since 1977.
The Ford Way forward? Remind me again what was Toyota's problem solving mantra that so many self-proclaimed management book authors chant again? Asking 5-whys? Teamwork, harmony, concensus decision making, eliminating muda? Sometimes people need a strong reminder that Toyota, however great it is, at the end of the day is just a company made up of imperfect humans, and it is really not THAT different from GM or any other companies once you peel through the carefully crafted image hiding the company's true intentions. Management fads come and go. Human nature of ego and greed is a constant that afflicts Americans just as much as Japanese.
Read more about the article by The Wall Street Journal here.
Related link :
Drumming up support for Akio Toyoda
The Infallible Toyota and Lumbering GM?
2 comments:
very interesting article. im hoping the ford fiesta coming to malaysia is a turning point of Japanese vs Conti auto industry.
Both the Fiesta and its sister car Mazda2 have been launched in Australia, Thailand and Singapore.
But somehow it is the Mazda2 is that is pulling ahead (very fast!). Somehow the Fiesta didn't create much interest even though they are almost the same car and I find the Fiesta more roomy. The Mazda2, especially in sedan form is a lil too small. Not to mention Fiesta sedan looks a bit more "complete" compared to the Mazda2 sedan which suffers from the typical "grated" boot on a hatch syndrome.
Malaysia's case is left to be seen, but not expecting it to be very different from other markets.
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