The Leadership Exchange
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The Leadership Exchange
S3E5: The Art of Strategic Alignment - A discussion with Mark Reich, Author of Managing on Purpose
In this episode, Mark Reich shares what he learned during his 23 years at Toyota—and why most companies struggle with strategy deployment. Drawing from his new book Managing on Purpose, Mark explains how Toyota's approach, called Hoshin Kanri, focuses on a few clear priorities, aligns teams at every level, and develops people along the way.
You’ll hear how techniques like “catch ball” build ownership and break down silos, and how even a seafood restaurant used Toyota principles to rethink its kitchen—and its business model.
Mark reminds us that this process isn’t about perfection from day one. It takes leadership commitment, time, and patience to get it right—but the payoff is worth it.
If you're ready to rethink how your organization tackles alignment to the top business priorities, this episode is for you.
http://www.lean.org/
https://www.lean.org/store/book/managing-on-purpose/
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Hello everybody, this is Steve McKeon.
Speaker 2:And this is Lupe Muñoz. Welcome to the Leadership Exchange For our guest today.
Speaker 1:we've got new author Mark Reich joining us, and I say that term with some endearment, Mark, because I recognize from getting to know you a little bit. This has been on the list for a while, and congratulations on your book Managing a little bit. This has been on the list for a while, and congratulations on your book Managing on Purpose. Looking forward to talking about that a little bit during the podcast. Give our guests a little bit of your background. So Mark spent about 23 years working at Toyota in a variety of roles, right out of college, all the way through to helping Toyota launch in North America America their manufacturing.
Speaker 1:And what's interesting is I've got to know Mark a little bit. Our paths with Toyota probably crossed a little bit, as I spent several years early on in my career visiting some of the Toyota facilities that were startups here, all the way from New May to the Lexington Kentucky facilities, and so I probably have crossed paths with people that you've known. Mark spent quite a bit of time working with the Toyota Supplier Support Center in a role there. But I think, Mark, what's really interesting and I'm going to let you kind of introduce yourself to our audience just maybe start a little bit at the beginning your background, how you ended up with Toyota, and then get us into a good story about why this Toyota experience, and kind of what you're doing now with Lean Institute Enterprise, has really led to you in the writing of this book.
Speaker 3:Well, stephen and Lupe, thank you for having me on. It's great to be here. As you said, I just published a book. The book you said is Managing on Purpose it some, to some extent a major bucket item for me.
Speaker 3:I graduated from college in the eighties. The U? S economy wasn't doing wasn't doing so great and the Japanese economy was booming. So a couple of years out of college I decided to go to Japan. I studied at a university there for graduate school. When I finished that program it was for the Japanese language.
Speaker 3:When I finished that program I had met my future wife, who's now been my wife for 37 years, and we wanted to stay in Japan a while. So I asked my professor if there were any companies that hired, and he said well, we get calls sometimes. And so he called his secretary and said Toyota just called us this morning. So I guess life, you know, you stumble into opportunities and you make some. So I worked for six years for Toyota in Japan, during an interesting time when they were launching the Lexus brand. I worked in product planning, actually, and did some work related to that.
Speaker 3:I ended up moving to the US in 1994 and, as you said, worked for the Toyota Supplier Support Center where I learned the Toyota production system. That was a group that Toyota set up to help its supply base and other companies implement TPS. I spent a fair amount of time there and then I was transferred to the Corporate Strategy Group where I led for about seven years our Ocean Con reprocess, which I guess we'll get into more about that, but that's what this book is about. So I literally learned how Toyota does that. Well, I ended up leaving Toyota in 2011, and, as you mentioned, came to the Lean Enterprise Institute.
Speaker 3:We're a nonprofit institutes set up by a gentleman by the name of Jim Womack in 1997. He wrote an important book called the Machine that Changed the World about the Toyota production system and actually coined the term lean, and I realized companies started to call me and because I had this experience in Toyota, particularly around corporate strategy and Ocean Connery and I started to call me and ask if I'd come and look at how they do strategy and I found a really big difference between what I had learned in Toyota and what I saw often in the world and after helping a lot of organizations the last seven, eight years, I decided I'm not going to be able to help everybody. It might be helpful to write something down. So I wrote this book to share the thinking with a broader audience.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Mark, I really enjoyed your book. First of all, I encourage everyone to share in its knowledge. You talk about this, the story of True Motors, which the company finds itself in what I would say is a very familiar place, probably for a lot of companies where, hey, things have been going well, but things are shifting. How do we recapture some of that momentum that we had? Competitions, fears. But immediately in the book you educated me on something I actually was not aware of, that the matrix wasn't really part of the initial concept of deployment strategy, and could you explain that a little bit more, Because I do feel that sometimes people do get hung up on tools versus really the intent behind the tool.
Speaker 3:To your question, that's partially the purpose of why I wrote this book. I learned some really powerful thinking around how while I was in Toyota and Toyota went through its own transformation at that point in time, so we were able to utilize Hoshin Conry pretty effectively to help Toyota's organization, particularly in North America. Points you brought up about a lot of organization going through changes. Toyota was going through huge changes at that time. Growth and market was changing. So out of that I developed that case study for the book really kind of related to somewhat my experience in Toyota but also many organizations that I had collaborated with, where I found that some of the key elements of how we kind of define what our strategy should be, develop that, how we align leadership and management up and down the organization to what the strategy should be and those objectives that we're going to focus on for the organization mid to long term and then how we execute on that and I would say, engage people up and down the organization and develop capability of people, were like critical items that I often saw like totally ignored.
Speaker 3:And you know one of the things I'd learned in, uh, when I was out in the field seeing other organizations I met. But one of the one of the things I learned, uh, through application of the Toyota production system, is that there can be a tendency for people to glom onto a tool because it seems like an easy thing to implement, when in fact this is a fairly complicated process. And while I was in Toyota, I never to speak to some of your question about the X-Matrix I never even saw an X-Matrix. I didn't know what it was when I came out. Actually, I was asked by a gentleman you might know, jeff Liker, who wrote the Toyota Way, and if I had ever seen that he was writing a book about leadership, I'd never seen it.
Speaker 3:I did get exposure to it after I started to visit organizations and I found that, as I commonly saw in the application of Toyota Productions, there was too much focus on trying to digest and use that tool and not enough focus on the learning and capabilities and alignment to leadership and how you execute effectively on the strategy.
Speaker 3:I wrote a little bit in my book. There's a sidebar about that. I decided not to focus on that tool or other tools specifically in the book, on that tool or other tools specifically in the book, and so I wrote a sidebar a little bit about tools and I'm a believer that if they can two things if they serve a purpose and there's like fundamental thinking behind them and they're easy and effective for people to use, then organizations should use them. The X matrix itself I've found and this is through my exposure post-Toyota to various organizations I know some organizations use it. My exposure is some organizations struggle with how to use it effectively because of the nature a little bit the complexity of the tool itself. That draws the focus and attention away from where the focus should be on development of people and alignment in the organization.
Speaker 1:That's a great point and just kind of my experience. I loved your book as well because it really brought me back to some of the initial learnings I had with TSSC as we started to learn about Hoshin, I think going back to my young self, a new leader in that space. I grew up technically trained as a civil engineer. Environmental sciences is the primary focus. Remediation, that kind of stuff Moved into health and safety and then all of a sudden was asked to take on a role in industrial engineering within an organization.
Speaker 1:I'd never heard the term lean before lean manufacturing. It was kind of interesting as I went through that. But the one thing that really stuck out at me in my journey is once we understood the importance of taking the time to learn about strategy planning and not have a big list right that companies tend to get a list of, you know, 10, 15, sometimes 20. Improvement priorities that you talk about in the book should really be part of daily management, but in some cases companies aren't there yet. So I found that you can easily not just get hung up on the tool but just really the clear focus that you point out in the book on what is important. So kind of walk us through your experience there maybe the young Mark Reich back in the day at Toyota. How did you learn to be focused in and around strategy, whether it's the Hoshin process itself or just in?
Speaker 3:general. Thank you for that question. It is a challenge that many organizations face. So I can speak to my experience in Toyota, but also post-Toyota and what I've seen In Toyota. My experience with Hoshin Kanri was mostly for the first half of my career as a team member or leader that had responsibility to participate in the process, and that participation in the process meant on an annual basis or, depending on where, what group you're in, your priority for the organization may align to the higher level priorities where they were set for the company, and then you may have, you may be participating in some of that key activity.
Speaker 3:But also, you know, one of the other parts I explain in the book is that hoshin in Toyota was a fractal thing, meaning that, yeah, there was something developed at the corporate level, but there was also individual plants. Individual departments in the organization established their own hoshin. Now it had to a certain extent, if you're, if you had work that's connected to the higher level hoshin, you had to have that on yours at the department level. But there were things that might be priorities for the department as well that they would maybe take on as their own priorities, meaning that that whole process of developing capability and building that structure, tiered structure in the organization happens both top down and bottom up, so we want thinking from within the organization as well. So that was kind of the experience I had through the course of the first half of my career in got. I then was put in charge of it in Toyota and I would say that that was a timing in Toyota that was fairly challenging for us. It was really I'm speaking like a decade, from like 1998 to like 2008,. Right before the major recession happened in 2008. That whole decade Toyota tripled its growth of sales in North America and also tripled our production capacity. So really adding all that capacity made it really challenging for Toyota to sustain its culture because we were bringing in and promoting people a lot quicker than we traditionally had done and sustain our management system. So you know, building that kind of strong foundation that way I think was really helpful for Toyota to sustain kind of its culture and further strengthening our pushing process was helpful too.
Speaker 3:And when I left Toyota, I mean I just found that most organizations tended to focus on those often way too many priorities and there was no clear methodology to take what might've been a priority one year and transition that to daily management Example that I often give is when Toyota launched the Prius in 1997, that was a brand new technology in the automotive industry the hybrid technology and at the time it was like a hoshing priority for Toyota because they never sold a car like that, they never made a car like that, they never developed a car like that. But after a few years, I mean that moved to daily management. Now, pretty much you can get a hybrid on almost any Toyota vehicle. So that's something we manage on a daily basis.
Speaker 3:You know hosting should really be about. What are those like? Three to five things that an organization feels are its priorities and they can align to and focus the organization on those things. At the most I would say three to five. In the book the true mowers, the case study has, you know, they end up with five that the organization is focusing on.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I wanted to get your insight on is an experience I've had in the last, I'd say, month, number one, after reading your book. It really set the mind frame way of thinking for me for these two events. So I was part of two exercises of strategy deployment you know, planning for our next fiscal year and in both of those I started to realize how different because in one organization, the higher organization, this was the first or the second time we actually did it, and in the, I'll say, the subordinate to the bigger organization, we'd been doing it probably for about four years I started to realize how different, different, the culture in a positive way was transforming throughout those years and I started to try to connect it to the exercise that you talk about in the book around PDCA process, but also the catch ball experience that leaders have Can you talk a little bit about? Maybe what I observed related to how this affects the culture. Does it affect the culture or does it reflect the culture of a team?
Speaker 3:Oh, that's a good, great question. You had several questions in there actually. So I think you know I'm a big believer that leader behaviors and actions in the organization create the culture. It's not this, and so I think this can impact culture a lot in organizations when done effectively. So your point about how you. Let me circle back to your question about catch ball and PDCA. Those are two of the primary concepts. We were talking earlier about the question of let's not focus on the tool, let's focus on the thinking and the practice and the methodology. Those are two important concepts that are introduced and discussed in pretty much depth in the book and illustrated through the case study of true mowers and how they utilize those methodologies to help them. Maybe it's better to talk about first PDCA, because the whole structure of the book is built around that structure.
Speaker 3:Pdca Plan Do Check Act. For those who might not be familiar, this was a concept introduced to Japanese companies by Edward Deming back in the late 50s as they were coming out of World War II trying to recover, and that's where the Japanese organizations like Toyota Bridgestone was another one really kind of adopted in the early 60s. Hoshin Kandriya is a methodology to help really came out of the total quality management movement, tqm, which was using PDCA to improve product quality and manufacturing quality. But Toyota said we need to improve everyone's quality quality across management. Out of that was kind of born this thinking that PDCA can be an effective methodology to build capability among management and build a structured kind of methodology to improve management ways. So the book is structured around how the. You know in the case study how true movers develops their plan. You know how they go about like executing on that, then how do they reflect on what they did and then how do they adjust and move things to daily management that they've accomplished. So that's an important part In the context of that catch ball.
Speaker 3:The other part of your question is a key component and I focus in the book and I think it's really two different things.
Speaker 3:There's vertical catch ball, which is really a development methodology in the organization, and there's horizontal catch ball which is really a methodology to build alignment of leadership across the organization.
Speaker 3:Vertical catch ball is really what we were kind of just talking about a little bit ago, where at the corporate level maybe we develop three to five objectives, how those get broken down at different levels in the organization all the way to frontline problem solving, so that leaders, middle managers, frontline managers, know their responsibilities on how to support the corporate level, higher level objectives and they contribute, they know how to contribute to those and they have input to those. That's kind of vertical catch ball, and that's explained in the book in a pretty structured way, pretty structured way. Horizontal catch ball, then, though, is actually what organizations in my experience with a lot of organizations struggle much more with, and because organizations tend to be siloed. Once you've defined those three to five things, how do we determine who's responsible and how do we determine what's expected, the plan, and how do we determine what other groups are responsible to support that and ensure that there is good alignment and support across the organization?
Speaker 1:Mark, you talk about this a little bit in your book as well in terms of the ability for this planning, the host and planning process to develop team members at multiple levels within the organization, and that's been my experience with it as well, having learned it early in my career and going through a couple of different really great organizations that had used the X-Matrix I think it was the Danaher tool. They were out consulting at the time and had adopted that. But the thing that I recognized whether it was kind of that traditional Toyota approach or the products that Dan or her had introduced to the companies I was with is the ability to gather the group right. So EHS, a lot of times the areas of my responsibility weren't necessarily at the forefront of change and once we started planning with Ocean it wasn't an option anymore, even if I didn't want to be, if I wanted to remain siloed. I couldn't. I had to be part of the process of looking at the strategies for the company and then where we play in that space or not.
Speaker 1:But just knowing that we've got to support the organization. So it really helped shape some clarity and I guess as a young leader in any organization let's take somebody now coming into the game. How can they increase their own knowledge in this space In addition to your book? And maybe their organization is just starting to look at more structured strategic planning process like Ocean. How can they help educate themselves? Well, get my book that would be a good start but yeah, I was going to recommend that to myself.
Speaker 3:Let's talk about this for you. The first part of what you said, which is really about how you know organizations putting together and who who needs to be involved in this and how. One of the fundamental concepts we need to think about that's introduced, that's talked about in the book and I'll speak to that example is that's talked about in the book and I'll speak to that example is that is an example in the book is that organizations, large and small, in whatever industry they have, need to define what their corporate priority, what the priorities are for the organization. Those are often irrespective of the functional silos that exist in the case of the book. They're often in fact initiated by, like the market forces or what the market they want to be in, where do they want to play, so to speak, and those factors don't relate to anybody who's in silo in any function, in the specific function of the organization. They're the kind of overall corporate objectives. So the big challenge becomes how do you take in the case of the let's just use the example from the book it's a lawnmower company and this is a reality. Actually, when I wrote this case, say more than 10 years ago, in reality it's played out the same way. I mean the lawnmower industry has moved from gasoline mowers, just like the car industry, to electric mowers.
Speaker 3:The book takes place at a point in time when a very well-established lawnmower company was struggling to develop a good electric mower. So that's the nature of the market. The company can't, doesn't have control of that. The market's moving. Now they have some control maybe, but the market's moving that way. But you can, but you can't develop and launch a mower that becomes one of their top priorities in the organization just through product development. I mean they might be the lead on getting the mower launched, because that's where the development happens. But you have to produce it, so you need manufacturing involved. You have to market and sell it. It's a brand new product, so they have to produce it. So you need manufacturing involved. You have to market and sell it. It's a brand new product, so they have to be involved. You may need new capabilities, so human resources might have to be involved with training, et cetera.
Speaker 3:Ocean Conrad has an excellent methodology to delineate and break down those responsibilities and get alignment across the organization to how you help. And in the book I introduce specific methodologies on defining who's going to support, who needs to support, for example, that product development initiative and how they're going to provide specific support to it. So I introduced that.
Speaker 3:The other thing to your point about new leaders or managers this is a methodology for organizations, it's not a methodology for a frontline manager, to tell you the truth. And so leaders, functional leaders in the organization, I think, can find this learning helpful. And often I suggest maybe to your point, stephen, is that you don't need to, particularly for bigger organizations. Don't try this across the whole company. I introduce that in the book. So if you're a leader, a new leader, let's say you have responsibility as a vice president of production. I mean you can pilot that in your own function, pilot the methodology. The methodology is applicable in any size organization or even a part of the organization, and so I would say read through it, define what your priorities should be as a function and then, as a function, determine who's going to do that and what support you need from other groups. That whole process can be done, I think, and it is done in the middle of the organization, but also at the top of the organization.
Speaker 1:You also point out in the book, and my own experiences as well, is that your first round of this is going to be clunky, right, it's not going to be perfect, but what's critical is building the approach and the dedication of time and resource. So those, the monthly meetings, the quarterly semi-annual reviews, and then, year over year, you get better at it, and so I think that was a really good thing. You pointed out in your book that you know by year three, some companies, maybe year five could be six. It really becomes part of how you do business. So you start to get the chops and then you know what comes out of it is other opportunities for improvement in areas adjacent to ocean, like daily management, right, and so I like the concept around.
Speaker 1:I'm a systems thinker by, I guess, career, and so I saw, you know, the magic start to happen in my own experience when companies were able to start doing this, and I always tell people because they try to be perfect out of the gate Don't worry about that, we just need to get started and we're going to learn. This is also about, you know, learning the process, learning to work together, to communicate. You may end up with 15 or 20 items on your list, but you recognize if you've done that you need to get it down to a smaller group in order to be effective, and so I think you know that's just my own experience with Hoshin and I really like how you pointed that out in the book.
Speaker 2:Much as I love what you talk about in the book Mark and the story that you tell, I'm going to disagree with your comment that you made a little bit earlier about like hey, although this is not primarily for a frontline leader, there are so many things that you have interwoven into this story that really does apply to all leaders In examples of what I see. I was going to ask you specifically about some of these components is like you really talk about, at least from my perspective and my interpretation, some of the things that we talk about during this podcast, which is like a servant leader aspect of it, a leading by humility aspect of it, a sort of like being a good listener and asking great questions perspective, and those are all extremely valuable behaviors for even that frontline leader that creates that culture of being able to focus on, in this case, strategy and the deployment of it. But all of those things will benefit a team's culture, even a supervisor on the frontline, I think, if they can grasp some of those elements.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a little bit, thank you for correcting me on that. You're right. I would say I didn't probably, and for your listeners my comment could have been misinterpreted. I didn't mean this doesn't have a big impact on frontline leaders. It has a huge impact. My point was that if you're looking to get this started and I think I say that in the book it does require a certain level of leadership in the organization for it to have an impact. Because, to Stephen's earlier point, it's kind of the way it was functioned in Toyota and the way I think it functions in good organizations. It's kind of an umbrella methodology that, because it defines for the company, I mean that's what strategy is kind of meant to be.
Speaker 3:For the organization whether it's the whole company or a function, what their primary goals or objectives are and how they're going to go about trying to achieve those. So that requires the. I believe it requires the engagement of leadership, the involvement, the direct involvement and actually leadership of leadership to be able for that to be effective One of the great outcomes of this there's an article I wrote a long time ago that I refer to Hoshinkanri and problem solving, and I refer to Hoshin Kanri and problem solving as and I refer to particularly A3 problem solving as like the muscle and the skeleton. I mean, to a certain extent, the Hoshin is the skeleton, it's the system in the body that holds the or in the organization that hold things together and connects everything. But you need muscle and the muscle. You need muscle at the front line, like to your point, because that's where the problems exist. One of the difficulties of many strategies I see in organizations that are like a poster on a wall when in fact like to achieve a vision or address a strategy, most of the gap that exists between where you want to go and where you are now exists in the problems in the work. It's not, you know, like the example that's in the book that I just talked about of, like launching electric mower. Well, they had a for the true mowers company. That's in the book is they had a. They had a prototype. They were struggling to get a production. Well, that's not something you just talk about in a conference room. There's reasons that they were struggling to get it from a prototype to production that relate specifically to the product development and the production work and how to build it. And, to your point, lou I do go into depth about this is really meaningful to look at the frontline work.
Speaker 3:I want to share an example. So I worked in the restaurant industry. Fair amounts. I've applied this in many different industries and restaurant industry was one. We were working in a seafood restaurant in the Boston area that applied this thinking and we redesigned. We had a huge impact on that to that business.
Speaker 3:By redesigning what the work of chefs do I mean. The chef is a, you know, probably one of the most if in a good restaurant had a huge impact on that to that business. By redesigning what the work of chefs do I mean, the chef is probably one of the most. If in a good restaurant, the chef is probably one of the more important individuals on staff, because they're the ones that actually make the quality food. Well, in this case, we found that the chefs were like the work of chefs was like Not effective. They were wasting a lot of time walking, bending, reaching, and we redesigned that work. In the process of doing that, it actually greatly reduced the footprint of the kitchen itself. You realize you can apply TPS and lean thinking in any practice in any industry. So we took out a lot of inventory. We made the work better.
Speaker 3:The ultimate outcome of that that appeared on their hosting is because the kitchen design was smaller. They were actually able to open up a brand new concept of restaurant inside the restaurant. They call it fast and fresh, where you could come in and get like a seafood poke bowl for people for lunch that just wanted to come and grab something quickly. This was traditionally a sit down restaurant. Out of the redesign of the frontline work, which came from the Hoshi originally to try to better attract customers, they were able to increase revenue in the restaurants, get a brand new customer base because they were able to redesign the kitchen customer base and because they were able to redesign the kitchen. I spent a lot of time on that because I do believe that. Well, I try to reinforce in the book and I'm glad you brought it up a little bit this is really about helping the work of the frontline people.
Speaker 2:And I knew that's not what you were trying to say.
Speaker 2:Mark, but I really for me that part of the genius of this book is there are so many of these things that aren't apparent, but they are. They exist in this book. They jumped out at me as I was reading. I'm like, yes, this has been. You know, this is a fantastic example. Here's another one that I want to call out, because it another great, uh enriching topic that you do do spend a little time talking about is. The story tells about how developing people and you've mentioned a little bit about capability developing people is part of your everyday as a leader, not just like a special project, as a leader, not just like a special project, and this, the process that you're talking about, reinforces that throughout the book, and I think that's part of your genius in writing. This is some of those subtle things that I think are very powerful.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm not a genius. I just learned that in Toyota and I appreciate every day that I had a chance to work in Toyota where that was really true, where development was part of the daily job and an expectation of management. One of the things that I point out, just to be a little bit more explicit about, I mean there's the daily mentoring, which we could spend a whole podcast on. One of the explicit things I don't ever see outside of, haven't seen outside of Toyota that's where that hosian connery can be very effective for is defining responsibilities and ownership of issues up and down the organization, meaning at the corporate level I mentioned. We talked about those three to five objectives. Well, each one of those has an owner and they're they're a leader of that objective. And you and just to start with that point, I mean you can imagine if, as as we talked about in our discussion, those aren't things that are limited to just one function. So the leader in the organization has to have the capability to do something I call lead by responsibility, not by authority. It's not because you've got to work across the organization and get consensus with others on what to do, and now sometimes that requires intervention from your boss, but it's a great opportunity to see how effective do people like, how effective is this individual who's been given responsibility able to lead across the organization? That's one component. The second component is that it clarifies because as you break down the hoshin in the organization starting with, you know, at the top level, and down into the functional level, to the frontline work, as you say, people can own problems in the organization that relate to the higher level, to the frontline work. As you say, people can own problems in the organization that relate to the higher level objectives. The ownership of those kinds of problems I think is motivating for people, but it also is it develops their capability. I mean it's it's good to know you know you work a lot of your life. Probably we work a third of our spend a third of our lives working at work. I think most people I'm a glass half full guy want to come to work knowing I know how I contribute to the betterment of the organization I work for. Hoshinkanri is an excellent methodology to delineate that up and down the organization and I think that's motivating and it's done because people at each level own problems and become like capable problem solvers.
Speaker 3:Now just one last point about that. That's a whole component and it's introduced, talked about in the book. That's a challenging part of ocean recovery. You can't just. That's why I wanted to move away from the tools. You can't just put in place a tool and expect the organization's going to respond. Tools you can't just put in place a tool and expect the organization's going to respond. You can put together a great back to my analogy of skeleton and muscle. You can put together a great hosheen. That kind of lays out the plan for everybody. But if the muscle of problem solving hasn't been built, you'll struggle. So you got to work on both.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great points, mark, as you were talking, I was thinking about an organization that I'd worked with for a short time that really couldn't get it together in terms of strategic planning. So the owner of the company kept deferring responsibility to others without committing themselves to the process. And they asked me I remember the conversation. He's like hey, steve, I've read all this stuff, I've been a leader for X number of years in organizations. I just don't know why these guys don't get it and it kind of goes back to some of the points in your book and you touched on.
Speaker 1:It is it takes the head of the organization, especially early on, to really be committed. If they can't set that example and they can't show their own commitment of time, resource, the mentoring, the system will fail Right, and so I think that's really an important point. One thing I'd like to just touch on next, mark, with you is as you look at kind of the new age of technology Right and in the people first centric approach of Toyota, how do you see technology and you've seen it throughout your career advancing within the company and where does that fall into strategy planning? Or does it fall into strategy planning right now with some of the organizations that you're working with?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, we're going through a pretty like probably important point in history around all of knowledge management where AI is probably going to help us a lot. I mean, it's already starting to show up and the prospect of how it will be used is, I think, hugely can be usually beneficial. I haven't implemented myself these tools as they relate to Hoshin Kanri. I think that there is, but I think there'll be. Really, I think there'll be very helpful. One of the things that's introduced in the book is there are inputs to Hoshin and then there's the development of Hoshin and then there's outputs. Often those inputs are a lot of organizations don't have well documented and inputs being like the market conditions and the market situation, the business environment currently the input and feedback from team members, customers and what their customers are saying about the business and other inputs. Those kinds of things are often in disparate systems, so being able to amalgamate that information more effectively and use it to consider what you should really develop is important.
Speaker 3:I have my own personal take on all this. I do worry a bit about I just know I have a long career now and I know that I probably learn more twice as much from the failures I had as the things that have gone well, and part of that requires penetrating and taking an initiative into unknown territory and obviously there are like key people, like big thinkers that do that. But, if you know, one of the great things about working at BitTude is you're kind of pushed to do that all the time on your own, and I think that I hope that AI and other technologies don't take that away from us, because that struggle is like so impactful on your, on people's development and and taking that away that idea of like struggling through that process and finding a solution and then finding maybe that didn't work so well and trying it again that whole process is, I think, very important for people development.
Speaker 2:Well said, we're getting close to the end of our episode here. Mark First, really appreciate your insights. It's fantastic, the time's flown for me, which is a great indicator of the interest and the engagement of this topic with you. If you could, we always love to ask this ending question to our guests, and so please prepare yourself. If you had to go back in time and speak to yourself as a leader, what advice would you give yourself, and why that particular advice?
Speaker 3:I think I can answer that pretty well. My nature and it's been beneficial for me many times but my nature is I'm not a real patient person, to tell you the truth. And so actually you know, coming into Toyota and in what is a very competitive industry, in probably the most competitive company in that industry, we have to recognize that Toyota is not where they are because they just know how to develop people. They're. It's a competitive company. For me, like not being a patient person, was like throwing a match on on gasoline.
Speaker 3:So I I appreciated that part of the of working in toyota like that, I guess a little bit of stress to excel, stress to like continually improve, continuously improve. But you know, uh, particularly coming out of two, like the world is has varying types of individuals that contribute greatly in many ways and I think having more patience for that how to interact and how to best help organizations or help the people I work with to excel is something. If I was going back 30 years I'd try to. You know it's a hard thing to teach, but I'd try to learn more how to be more patient with others.
Speaker 3:So I've learned that now, but I'm at the end of my career.
Speaker 2:Well, said, that's an internal beast that I struggle with as well, mark, so I can very much relate to and I can very much appreciate that.
Speaker 3:Well, the difficult outcome from that sometimes can be you push too quickly to get the answer you want and what you want, when in fact people have to find and I'm not saying this is true most people want to find their pathway and want to solve the problem that's in front of them. I think how you nurture them along, that is a really important part of a leader's role, and I would reflect on how I over my career, how I've gotten better at that, but I didn't start out that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely a balance, mark, Because you need sometimes the problem solving to go at a faster pace than the individual's pace of learning, and I think what you've touched on is that the patience of being a good mentor but still applying pressure so that we're not going at their pace. We're going at the pace needed for resolution right, and I definitely appreciate that as well. I've grown more patient later in my career as well as early on. This has been great. I know, mark, we appreciate your time Again. What an amazing book.
Speaker 1:I told Lupe. It really resonated with me because it took me back to my early learning about Toyota production system and ocean planning and the fact that this book was so needed because the tools that are out there for this kind of planning really are so rooted in the tools and you've got to be almost a sensei of the tool versus the process. Right, and that's what I love about your book really, and I'm encouraging others that I've met and know and we're starting to use your book now within the organization we're with as well to help us refine our ocean planning process. Thank you for the book and the time today, lupe.
Speaker 2:any other parting thoughts or comments for Mark Really resonated with me. Mark, I appreciate you for it and for your contribution to leaders out there and in the world in general. But with that said, thank you. Hopefully in the future you'll join us again. We can continue to talk in some of these other topics that touch on this, but in the meantime, this is Lupin Munoz.
Speaker 1:And I'm Steve McKeon and our special guest Mark Reich, us on the leadership exchange.
Speaker 2:Thank you, and have a good day.