snow INSIDE classroom window

There is something wrong in the US.

We do the research, but the results are often implemented in other countries, with enviable outcomes, but ignored here.

It was adoption of the work of American Edwards Deming by Japanese industry, especially automobiles, that changed “made in Japan” from a symbol of shoddy work to one of world-class quality—decades before the US moved in that direction.

Despite being honored in Japan in 1951 with the establishment of the Deming Prize, he was only just beginning to win widespread recognition in the U.S. at the time of his death in 1993.

When it comes to education, it’s Finland.

Year after year, Finland is ranked as one of the world leaders in education while America lags far behind.
But it’s not that Finland knows more about how to build effective schools than the US does.
Almost all education research takes place in the US, and American schools can’t seem to learn from any of it — and yet Finnish people do.
Over time, the ideas have helped shape the Finnish education system as one that prizes autonomy, peer learning, collaboration, and varied forms of assessment. These were all ideas developed at one time or another by American theorists, yet modern American classrooms — noted for their heavy reliance on tests and teacher-guided lectures — bear little resemblance to those up north.

Bjarke Ingels, Danish architect of Two World Trade Center, Google North Bayshore and many others, made a telling comment that the US would do well to take to heart.

“The education of our youth is one of the best investments any society can make. In that sense, not investing in our future is simply the worst place to cut corners.”

It took the US 40 years to embrace quality and we’re still playing catch-up.

We don’t have 40 years when it comes to education.

Image credit: @ Detroitteach

I find obituaries fascinating and inevitably learn a great deal reading them.

Although not familiar with Eiji Toyoda, a member of Toyota Motor’s founding family and an architect of its “lean manufacturing,” who died recently at age 100, I am familiar with his results.

In addition to lean manufacturing, he championed the idea for the Prius and, most importantly, the concept of kaizen.

Kaizen is the philosophy that underlies Toyoda’s culture and is responsible for its amazing decades-long growth and success.

…“kaizen,” a commitment to continuous improvements suggested by the workers themselves, and just-in-time production, a tireless effort to eliminate waste. Those ideas became a core part of what came to be called the Toyota Production System and a corporate ethos known as the Toyota Way.

I’ve heard the concept discussed by hundreds of managers over the years and heard many say that it didn’t work when they or their company tried it.

Kaizen reaps only modest success or fails outright in many companies for the same reason that consultants are hired.

Much of American management prefers its solutions and improvements in the form of slickly designed reports and impressive PowerPoint presentations from outside the company and that attitude seems to increase with rank.

Unlike Toyoda and its ilk, where, sans monetary rewards or stock options, workers strive to improve both products and processes.

“One of the features of the Japanese workers is that they use their brains as well as their hands,” Eiji Toyoda said in an interview with the author Masaaki Imai for the 1986 book “Kaizen.” “Our workers provide 1.5 million suggestions a year, and 95 percent of them are put to practical use. There is an almost tangible concern for improvement in the air at Toyota.”

Too often, when US companies invite suggestions from throughout their ranks, they implement only a small number of them and those usually come from “recognized” stars.

That approach/attitude does, however, create jobs by giving rise to an entire industry of high-earning consultants dedicated to teaching management how to “increase employee engagement.”

I wonder if one of the slides is about listening to everyone and then using the ideas.

Image credit: Toyota, 2000GT.net via Japanese Nostalgic Car

Branding. The term is everywhere. No longer reserved for a product it refers to the organization itself.

Creating a great brand is an understandable and, at times, even worthy goal, but after creation it’s necessary to care for the brand, AKA, brand management.

Sadly, more and more effort is being made to ‘Teflonize’ brands and brand management has morphed into brand spin.

Anyone who watches TV knows that Toyota is spending a million dollars a day improving quality and, hopefully, fixing a culture that lost its way.

Then there is BP and its so-so-sincere promise to stay in the Gulf until they make it right—yeah, sure. Business Week offers an excellent view on the impact of the spill long before the oil even got near the shore.

Then there is the most Teflonized brand in the world, the Catholic Church, which I wrote about from the perspective of leader vs. manager a few months ago. The oldest and richest organization on the planet seems to be impervious—a true master of spin brand management. After all, what other brand could withstand the global sex scandals that are rocking the world and still see revenues (donations) increase since January 2010?

The purpose of brand management is to keep a positive image in the public eye, no matter how egregious the actions involved.

This is more easily accomplished than you would think, given the vast majority of the public has a short attention span, poor memory, a greedy nature—Louisiana already wants to resume off-shore drilling—and that’s when they are paying attention.

The question, then, is who will win?

The Teflon brands or us?

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shalabhpandey/4117173190/

Anybody who is exposed to any media knows that US automakers are on life-support, while Japanese companies are only hurting.

There are many reasons for this, but the lethal combination of low-to-no innovation, stifling bureaucracy and atrocious management/leadership is a primary factor.

Wally Bock has a great post comparing the suggestion systems at GM to that of Toyota.

“The GM employees share less than one suggestion per year each. The company uses a quarter of them. By contrast, Toyota workers make 17.9 suggestions per person per year. Eighty percent are implemented.”

The bottom line is pretty obvious.

“Toyota thinks people are valuable and have brains. GM thinks that the people with brains are the ones somewhere further up the org chart.”

There are many companies who assume that brains start at a certain level and I’ve always found that mindset hilariously stupid.

Hilarious because all of the people with brains worked most of their careers at the levels without brains; stupid because of the talent, skill and creativity completely wasted.

Image credit: MJCdetroit on Wikipedia Commons