The Wise Company by Ikujiro Nonaka

Author:Ikujiro Nonaka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2019-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

In terms of the Big Picture, Akio Toyoda already has in mind a future in which cars transform themselves from being “vehicles for” their customers into becoming “friends with” their users. Thirty years down the road, cars may replace dogs as “man’s best friend,” given Toyota’s recent foray into robotics, artificial intelligence, and social networking services.

Until now, we’ve cited the example of only CEOs, but don’t get us wrong. Seeing the forest is something everyone in the organization should be trying to do in order for the SECI spiral to move up. Workers closer to the front line are more accustomed to seeing the tree on a day-to-day basis, so they need creative routines to enable them to see the forest as well. Toyota refers to these as kata. The kata that Toyota Motor uses to encourage everyone in the organization to see the Big Picture—especially those lower down in the organization—is called “Thinking Two Levels Above” their current positions. For those who join the company, that means thinking like a section manager; for section managers, that means thinking like the general manager of a division, and so on.

Doing that forces people out of their silos and compels them to take a broader view. Just as the view of the landscape changes as a climber goes from the foot of a mountain to the top—this kata encourages employees to imagine what it would be like to view the world from a position two levels higher up the mountain. Everyone in Toyota is familiar with the “Thinking Two Levels Above” kata and, more importantly, has made it a habit.33 We will discuss kata in more detail in Chapter 9.

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