Toyota: Sharpening the Saw

Are you happy? No I don't mean this in some sort of philosophical sense of happiness being a destination which is the point of our entire existence... All I mean is, "Are you happy with where you are exactly right now? Is everything in your life completely perfect? Can nothing be done to improve your life even a little bit?

To this question, the human answer is probably "no". But this is a good thing! Humanity's everlasting quest to better itself has given us all sorts of great innovations. So shout it out loud! "I'm not happy!" OK maybe don't shout that out loud, but take this as a small reminder to follow Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw.

I was reminded of this rule a short while ago while reading an article in Fast Company (a subscription I started on the recommendation of my accounting professor). The article was about Toyota, the world-wide #2 car maker, which is seeming like an unstoppable juggernaut poised for even more growth. How do they do it? There are quite a few books written on this topic, and they all seem to point to an obsession with innovation for improving quality and bringing down costs.

Every employee down to the shop room floor has a voice in coming up with ideas for improving processes. Even more, each of these improvements isn't considered a "project" or "initiatives". Instead the power of continuous improvement applied every day, to every employee, allows Toyota to make cars more efficiently than their American competitors (even while using the same workers!) And the thing is... no one can copy them. Well not exactly, but even if competitors copy their efficient production methods, they haven't been able to replicate the culture of continuous change (continuous sharpening of the saw) that is always challenging the status quo to see "How can I do this better, or faster, or with fewer errors?"

So what's the take away? Keep thinking about how you can improve and you'll be so far ahead of your competitors, it will seem to be like you're in a race where hardly anyone else is running!

-Jason