In 2002 I earned a Toyota grant to explore Japanese culture and business, part of the inspiration to build a non-Western literature course, among other things. Here is one of the essays I wrote at the end of that trip, appropos today, as well.
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Toyota founder Sakichi Toyoda said, “Each person should have one great project in their lives.” For us, that project is undoubtedly the education of young people. I know that it has become that for me. So it should be no wonder that his words resonated with me the moment I heard them in Toyota Motor Sales Headquarters in Los Angeles just before we departed for a two week educational tour of Japan this past summer of 2002. And they colored my experiences throughout the journey.
Surely any corporation will put its best face forward, the Japanese hardly the least of them. It’s part of any company’s pledge to become number one in customer satisfaction. It would be easy to discredit the corporate source for its record of isolationism, its lagging record in employing women, its failure to protect standards through the equivalent of an OSHA in Japan, or even in the dangerous metaphor of equating education with manufacturing. Setting aside the genetic fallacy of such a dismissal, ignoring Toyota’s lessons misses the point that it is hardly separate from the culture which produced it, from basic ideas of community and of tradition which pervade Japanese society. Through Toyota we might learn from Japan.
And so, I listened for my great project and found the connections powerful. Jim Press, Executive Vice-President of Toyota Motor Sales in the US, for instance, spoke of approaching three men working with jackhammers and asking them, “What are you doing?” The first answered, “I’m busting rocks.” The second said, “I’m trying to feed my family.” The third said, “I’m building a temple.” What we do is not important for its mundane acts nor its practical results, but for the vision which belongs to each employee, each educator. So what is the vision?
I believe it is in Toyota’s use of an ancient Shinto idea. We are all used to the signs throughout America’s parks and we often quote them: “Take nothing but pictures; leave nothing but footprints.” The philosophy is one of minimal impact on our environment; we are, in essence, to cause no harm by doing nothing. For Toyota, the philosophy is quite different: “Leave the world better than you found it.”
Fundamental to this idea is vision and the creativity and courage to realize it. And it is this which powers Toyota’s philosophy—more importantly, it might power our own.
Toyota lives a kind of philosophical hybrid of creativity and Quality (in the Demming sense). Its own three C’s are creativity, challenge, and courage. Each are vital to our leaving the world better than before.
Creativity means finding the means for achieving one’s goals: “Before you say you can’t do something, try it!” argued Sakichi Toyoda. It also means that one must overcome obstacles with ingenuity. I am reminded of the story of the shogun who was denied muskets by European traders. He made a guest of a British gunsmith and subverted the aims of those who sought to limit him. That also means, however, accepting challenges that come with the vision.
Both the Clinton and Bush administrations balked at fulfilling the Kyoto Protocols on the environment, frankly and openly concerned that to pledge to the internationally-prescribed CO2 levels would impact the US economy. Japan will meet the Kyoto standards by 2005, five years ahead of the recommended schedule. This is due in no small part to Toyota which has marketed ten times more hybrid vehicles than its leading competitor (also Japanese), Honda. Toyota continues to grow Japan’s economy after the Asian financial crisis and, more, will sell its hybrid vehicles to other auto companies to help them also reach the Kyoto standards.
Toyota automobiles recycle more parts than any other automaker, including plastic body sections which are ground up to form new auto bodies. Toyota uses a mixed production line: all models, foreign and domestic, are produced on one assembly line; each car has its own individual instruction sheet. In its drive to produce no defective products, Toyota created the Just-In-Time system,kanban, where parts are replaced for production only as needed. Thus, it is impossible to produce even dozens of defective vehicles because any mistake in product is limited.
None of this would succeed if the company did not also proceed with the courage to trust everyone to its vision. This is jidoka, this is kai-sen, this is the belief that humans can be empowered to think and correct the machine (jidoka) in order to achieve continuous improvement (kai-sen). Many American teachers laughed when we heard in LA that every worker was empowered to stop Toyota assembly if he discovered an error. But touring the Miyamachi Plant in Toyota City, I watched it happen.
Along every manufacturing line is a long, broad, white rope, raised above the workers similar to what one sees on subway cars. If an error is found, any worker might pull the rope and halt the production line until the mistake is corrected. And, while we might have supposed that workers creating such unpredictable stops would be discouraged or even penalized, quite the opposite is true. Stopping the line earns the worker a bonus. On our 45 minute tour of the plant, I saw the line stopped five times, usually just to give the worker more time to complete a task. Toyota seeks employee alerts so that it can make corrections.
Kai-sen means that workers must also have the experience and education to make the right decisions. “Good thinking, good products” is a company slogan. But here is where the links to American education become too plain.
The significance of a vision is equated to experience and to education. Toyota’s employees are trained well. They become experts in a variety of positions, just as any professionals would, and their suggestions are sought as a natural and routine policy. Each shares the vision, is offered the challenge, and courageously steps forward to find creative solutions.
Perhaps this seems a bit heavy-handed for mere factory workers. Certainly other cultural differences between Japan and the United States impact the effect—Japan is not unionized as America is (workers are guaranteed employment), and the Japanese have a stronger sense of community ethic than do Americans, perhaps—but that, too, is part of the lesson for America’s schools.
Education is the key ingredient of community that we as teachers value. It is the “great project” that each of us undertakes. Like Toyota which places 64% of its philanthropy into education, we must recognize that customer (our students) and community (parents and teachers) are linked to the same purpose. In fact, I have just described the Toyota logo.
The “T” link is the relationship between community and customer in a global vision. “Open the window,” says Sakichi Toyoda. “It’s a big world out there!” The only question for us is whether public schools can retain a vision instead of merely break rocks or find motivation in economics. Can public schools as systems find courage to accept the challenge to be creative; can they allow everyone in their inter-connected community to do the same?
Can we keep individualized instruction within single classrooms? Can we work consistently for true Quality or mastery? Can workers ask for and be given the time to do their job well? Can we place resources precisely where they are needed? Can we work as a team for kai-sen? Can we leave the world better than we found it?
Ironically, the Toyoda family changed the name of the company to Toyota for a number of fairly esoteric reasons: the new kanji would use a lucky eight strokes, the name was more aesthetically pleasing, etc. But Toyota is a made-up word. In Japanese it has the rare distinction of being a word without meaning. But I think that is its advantage. For Toyota, there is no denotation which should limit its creativity, there is no closed signifier which prevents change. There is jidoka for kai-sen.
Steve Chisnell (um, on the right) is a teacher at Royal Oak (MI) High School. 
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