Jeff Liker, Twenty Years Later: The Ideas That Keep Showing Up

Speaker A: Celebrating our 20th year of lean Podcasting. Hey, it's Mark Graben. If you've ever felt like you had to be perfect at work or you're worried about making mistakes, check out my audiobook, the Mistakes that Make Us. I share stories about how owning and learning from mistakes actually leads to better results, stronger teams, and real innovation. It's available on Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, or just head over to mistakesbook.com I hope you'll give it a listen.

Speaker B: Hi, Mark, it's Karen Martin. Thank you so much for the 20 years of sharing your wisdom and experience with people across the globe on your Lean Blog podcast. And thank you also for having me on five times because I always enjoy our conversations and, you know, doing whatever we can to help people become more successful at making improvement and helping organizations perform at top levels. Congratulations on 20 years and may you have many more to come.

Speaker C: Welcome to the Lean Blog Podcast. Visit our website@www.leanblog.org. now, here's your host, Mark Graben.

Speaker A: 2006 was the year I started this podcast. Jeff Leiker was guest number three in August of that year. He's been back on seven more episodes since, which makes him one of the most frequent guests this show has ever had. What I've done here is pull some clips from across those conversations going back almost 20 years. Listening through them again, I was struck by how much hasn't changed the tools. The Lean tools are better known now. There are more case studies, more books, more conferences. The deeper thing Jeff was naming in 2006, that companies want the words without the work, is the same thing he'd say it seems in 2026 these aren't his greatest hits. They're the ideas that keep showing up. One of the first things Jeff said to me, and he's said versions of it in every conversation since, is that the gap between talking about Lean and actually doing Lean or TPS is enormous. Here's how we put it today.

Speaker D: I would say that well over 90%, uh, are, ah, talking about it and have talked about it. I would say that almost all of them that have talked about it have done something. They've done some individual projects, they've hired consultants, they've done projects at individual plants, they've done Kaizen workshops. They kind of learned the words and, uh, they've seen some results. I would say the number that have deeply implemented the Toyota production system as a system in their plants is probably below 2%. Uh, so they're not just talking about it and they've done it, but what they've done are used individual tools in individual places. Occasionally there's a plant manager who really, uh, get, really has a good feel for this, drives it through the whole plant, does a great job. They leave the company, the plant reverts back to the way it was. Uh, but if you were to try to find a model supplier that really has TPS broadly across their plants, it's

Speaker A: hard to find that gap shows up in a particular way. Companies decide they've mastered lean in their plants and now they're ready to take it across the rest of the business. Jeff isn't buying it.

Speaker D: We got great success. Now it's time to move to the enterprise level. Unfortunately, if you go into their plants, you see something different. They haven't done it in their plants. They just talked about it. They've done individual projects or been successful, but their plants are far from, uh, what you see in the China production system. So they've superficially done it in their plants and now they're ready to superficially do it throughout the rest of the enterprise.

Speaker A: If you've heard a consultant or somebody pitch lean transformation in 14 weeks or 12 or 6 or 52, this next clip is for you. Jeff describes what it really takes when Toyota opens a brand new plant under what he calls ideal conditions.

Speaker D: No, in fact, when Toyota starts a new plant, like, they'll start a new, open a new plant in Canada, they're working on one in San Antonio, Texas now for their Tundra truck. And when they open a new plant, they'll have put about two years into starting to develop and prepare the leaders to understand. TPS will send to Japan, they'll work in Toyota plants in Japan. They'll be immersed in it. They'll hire people, they'll train them for months. They'll set them up in a completely lean environment with all the tools of lean. And if you ask a good leader like Don Jackson, uh, leading the San Antonio effort, if you ask Don Jackson, how long will it take the San Antonio plant to, to really be, to really understand lean and live it and follow the Toto way principles, they'll say about three to five years. Those are under ideal conditions where you hired people from scratch. And day one, you've indoctrinated them into the Toto way. They've been to Japan, they have models. They're part of a network, uh, of other company, other plants that have been around for all in the US they'll have a mother plant, which is a Princeton Vianda plant that's been at this for years and he would still say it'll take them between at least three to five years to really start to get it and understand it. So uh, under ideal conditions with everything in place and all the right leadership and all the right tools, it takes two to three to five years. Uh, Ohio company that has never done it before and never seen it before can do it in 14 weeks.

Speaker A: Picking and choosing is a pattern I see all the time companies say they want to build their own system, custom fit it to their culture and that sounds reasonable on its face. Jeff's response though is sharper. When you only pick the parts that reinforce what you're already doing or already thinking, you're not really changing anything.

Speaker D: Well I think that the uh, uh, picking and choosing right is a problem. And I've heard companies say we're going to develop our own system and we want to find best practices and we want the best of what we can find in the world from many different companies and they piece together a uh, system and it's kind of, I have mixed feelings because on the one hand they should be doing that, they should be creating their own system, they should have ownership, they should identify with it. Uh, on the other hand what they often pick and choose are things that are designed to reinforce their current management system and their current philosophy, which is short term focused, it's project focused, program focused and therefore all the best practices they will put in place will all be a bunch of individual programs that really won't change things very much. Uh, if you take all the principles of TOTOI together, what you're trying to drive toward is to become a learning organization. And very few companies are learning organizations. Mostly they're uh, trying to uh, they're looking at their company as a technical system where we're just shoving in inputs and tools and people and we want to get products out and we want to make money. But they don't understand that really to uh, be successful in the long term they have to actually create a learning community where people are willing to share problems and solve problems and get better every day. Uh, that's really the goal of the Tidal Way. So they can't just simply pick and choose and say, well we'll pick Kanban, we'll pick this tool, we'll pick this SAP system, uh, the BMW that well, and shove these in and expect to become a learning organization.

Speaker A: Jeff once interviewed Fujio Cho, who was the president of Toyota at the time. Before that Cho ran the Georgetown, Kentucky plant, the first Toyota assembly plant in the U.S. jeff asked him what was hardest to teach the Americans about tps. And Cho's answer wasn't the tool. I would have guessed.

Speaker D: Well first of all, I would say all of them are tough. None of them come easy. Uh, but uh, a couple that stand out. One of them is uh, the principle of stopping when you have a production problem, the Andon principle. And I say this in the Toyota way that I had interviewed Fujiyo Cho, who at the time was the president of Toyota, and he had been the president of Toyota in Georgetown, Kentucky. And uh, he taught the Americans about TPS and their first Toyota assembly plant in the US And I asked him uh, what was the hardest thing to teach the Americans? And he said the hardest thing with Andon was to teach them that it's okay to stop when there's a problem in Pola and on court. And asked him, well, how did you teach them? He said I had to go to the. There's a president. At the time his title was president. He said I had to go to the floor every single day and say, please pull the cord, you have a problem. Uh, so that's again what reflects this culture, uh, that we've developed that says problems are to be hidden and they're not to be admitted. If you admit a problem, you're the problem because uh, you must have caused it. If you're a good worker, if you're a good man, you ought to be able to solve the problem yourself. Whereas in the Titus system, the whole system is based on people surfacing uh, problems so that teams can solve the problem. The first assumption is always the problem is with the system, it's not the individual. It may be with the individual, but, but the first assumption is with the system. Uh, uh, so that stopping the line, losing production is counter to every instinct we have about producing every part you can every minute of the day. And that leads to the other principle which is uh, the principle of reflection and hansei and continuous improvement and inter. They believe that reflection is necessary for Kaisern. And reflection does come down to a personal issue, which is that each person uh, has to believe that they want to do the best they can. And whenever they do something, they now have an opportunity to learn from what they've done and improve. And that's true at the individual level. For the group it's true for the plant, it's true for. Or a product development organization. Uh, and that's very, very cultural that uh, in Japan it's actually quite natural. In the US it's quite unnatural. We're used to charging ahead and solving the next problem, fighting the next fire. And the idea of stopping and saying, right, we just launched this plant. What have we learned from launching this plant? So that the next time we launch a plant things will go better. And what can we do to systematically ensure that the next launch is better than this launch? And we don't do that well at all. Uh, it's similar to, uh, stopping when there's a problem, which then takes you to reflecting, which then takes you to really, truly trying to put in a countermeasure that will improve the system. And what you see in Toyota is a system is they don't believe that you can implement the perfect lean system. They believe the essence of lean is you implement a flawed system, you know it's flawed. And then over time, through continuous improvement, you make the system better and better and better. And lean tools are designed to surface problems so that you can make the system better. We think that you should be implementing the perfect lean system. And if there's a problem, it's because somebody didn't do the job right.

Speaker A: Jeff co authored a book called Toyota Culture with Mike Hosayas. Mike spent years inside Toyota. Together they laid out what they called the non negotiables, the things you can't trade away without breaking the system. This one is about how Toyota thinks about its suppliers and what happens when an American purchasing manager finds a cheaper part overseas.

Speaker E: Yeah, and uh, the idea, uh, that uh, a manager is a teacher, that's non negotiable.

Speaker D: And

Speaker E: creating, uh, doing everything you can to create job security for people is non negotiable. So some purchasing guy in America saying, hey, I can get a deal on this part by moving to India or China and save 30%, uh, it will require shutting, uh, down one of our suppliers in America. That's not allowed, that's not permitted. The response to the Japanese teacher, and still the Japanese play that role of being the sensei, the senior teachers, they would ask, ah, if you do this, what message will it send to all the rest of our suppliers who we've been planning, our partners in America? And isn't there, what is the real problem? Isn't there a way to solve the problem that does not involve going to, shutting down a supplier in America? So they would, um, see that solution of going to China or India as being, uh, an easy, quick fix without really studying the problem and without really seriously considering alternative.

Speaker A: Jeff spent time at Toyota's plant in the United Kingdom and describes something they teach in their training room about roles and Authority. They call it don't skip hats. The idea is simple. The discipline is harder,

Speaker F: and it lays out their roles and responsibilities. And there's various teaching points. And at one point they have a row, uh, of hats, and each hat has a different symbol on it. And one hat says I'm a team member, and one hat says I'm a team leader. And depending on how many bars there are or something. So they have these all lined up and then they show an arrow from the team leader to the team member, group leader to the team leader, manager to the group leader, and they say, don't skip hats.

Speaker D: Interesting.

Speaker F: You know, so if a, uh, team member were to pull a cord and a manager were to come down and say, why did you pull that cord to the team member? That would be considered inappropriate. The manager should be asking the group leader. And one of the things the manager is trying to, to determine is whether the group leader knows whether they have investigated enough to know. Uh, but. So the group leader is, uses that data to then coach the group leader. But if the, if the manager goes down to the floor and asks the worker what happened and why, can you explain it to me? Number one, they're usurping the authority of the team leader and group leader. Number two, they're not going to have the depth of understanding that the team leader has. So they're likely to start to jumping, jump to conclusions. Uh, and there may well be a reason why, based on past history and based on various conditions, why the team leader and group leader reacted the way they, they have. And the manager won't understand that and they may mess up things. So, uh, and that's a common issue when we're teaching other, other managers and other companies is that they think the reason why you go to the Gemba is so that you can solve the problems as opposed to just observe you're a, uh, fly on the wall. And then you have to think and reflect on what should, you know, what should I do about this?

Speaker A: One of the reasons I wrote my book on mistakes, the mistakes that make us, is that the default instinct in most organizations is to find someone to blame. And this happens, unfortunately, in companies that would call themselves lean. Jeff has a way of putting this that I keep coming back to. He calls it the difference between the five whys and the five who's.

Speaker F: Well, that was in part. Part of that comes from, uh, Dr. Deming, uh, where he said, drive out fear. And he said like 90% of problems are system problems and they're the responsibility of management. Uh, he was not saying 100%. So there's some, whatever it is, 10, 20, but some percent that really is somebody just wasn't paying attention and they messed up or they didn't think of the rule at the time, or they were not paying attention when the standard work was explained or something. So, uh, but he's saying that in the vast majority of cases it's a system. So let's start with the assumption it's a system. And that's something that then became kind of religion within Toyota. So they talk about the difference often between the five whys and the five who's, and the uh, who is, who's to blame and the five wisest, what allowed this to happen. And when you, when you do the five whys, it's not unusual that anybody, any person, whether they work for Toyota or elsewhere, that their natural inclination is to blame the person. So they might say so and so dropped the nut and, or so and so put on five nuts instead of six. And then you'd, you could say, uh, well, what are you going to do about it? But in Toyota they would say, why did that happen? So they would what? They, they wouldn't say, don't blame the person, that's not our policy, and start reading the right act. They would just simply say, all right, fine, that person dropped it. Why did they drop the part? And then let's say they said because they weren't following, paying attention and they didn't follow the standard work. Again, you don't need to argue with that person. All you need to say is why didn't they follow the standard work? And at some point, and I also have written about the idea of tradicata in Mike Rother's work, and one of the things he talks about is a threshold of knowledge. And when you're at the point of a threshold of knowledge, you want to investigate. So at some point you're going to detect that the person you're talking to, uh, is just guessing. Like why didn't he follow the standard work? Uh, I guess he wasn't paying attention when we did the training. Okay, I guess, uh, how could you find out? So now you're stopping the process and you want the person to go and observe, talk to people, investigate, and then come back to you so you can then do more coaching. So the five why is often thought of as a technical process to get to the root cause, when actually it's can be a coaching process as well. And also you often assume that the first answer that's Given is superficial. And by digging down, you're getting to the actual system that allowed this to happen. The other part of five why is that you want really to find not the root cause, but a controllable cause that will make an impact. So if you keep on asking five why enough, you'll get to things outside of your control, like it was product development spot. And, uh, that's too far. So, you know, we, we know that we're not going to see a change in product development until the next new model introduction. So what can we work on right now?

Speaker A: I've always joked, and maybe I heard somebody else make this comment, so I won't claim it was original, original thought, but passing along the idea of you. If you ask why too many times, you end up somehow blaming society or Congress and you've gone, you've got.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker F: Or you could get into, you know, minerals, how, how their minerals are taken from the earth. You can go to. You can go into evolution of how humans evolved and our genetic weaknesses.

Speaker A: Yeah, somehow it was a damn meteor strike. Hundreds of millions, but.

Speaker E: Yeah.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker F: Yeah. So the point is, again, it's. There's always more than one cause, and there are some things we control and there's some things that we can't.

Speaker A: Eight conversations across 20 years. Jeff has learned a lot. I mean, he hasn't changed his mind about the core things. Uh, I'm not sure he needed to. The 2% problem he was describing in 2006 is still the 2% problem. And what I keep wondering about is whether 20 years from now on this. I, uh, don't know if the show will hit a 40th anniversary. If we were, would we be having a different conversation? Or versions of this same one? As always, this is Mark Graben. Thank you for listening. Whether it's been the whole 20 years or just this episode. Thanks.

Speaker C: Thanks for listening. This has been the Lean Blog podcast for Lean news and Commentary. Updated daily, visit www.leanblog.org. if you have any questions or comments about this podcast, email markastmail.com.

Speaker D: Foreign

Speaker A: let's be honest. The old wooden suggestion box is where great ideas go to die. And trying to manage continuous improvement in a chaotic maze of spreadsheets that's not much better. It's time to digitize your daily Kaizen process. This episode is sponsored by Kinexus, the platform designed to empower your team to capture implementation and measure every improvement from the front line to the executive suite. Stop letting innovation slip through the cracks. See how to spread a true culture of continuous improvement today at www.kinexis.com.