90 Toyota in 100 Cars. How Toyota has taken over Africa and the World.
On the 5th of April 2019, around 6 pm, I was returning from office when an unusual thought struck me. Every car I’ve seen is a f*****ing Toyota. I charged myself the task of knowing how dominant Toyota really is so, I started counting the number of car brands I see before arriving home.
If I vividly remember, I was able to count 111. Guess what?
you’re right, Toyota alone counts 92. Really intriguing.
Why is everyone crazily obsessed about Toyota? I mean, they’re not the cheapest or the most fuel efficient car around.
Some Nissan, Hyundai and even Chevrolet are way cheaper.
The most fuel-efficient car award 2018 goes to Mitsubishi, Honda, and Hyundai in that order.
To make this story a bit interesting, it is imperative to flash back to the early days of the car revolution when America car companies, Ford and General Motor were the two Juggernauts, battling for supremacy before 1900, crushing newcomers and re-establishing their status quo in the market. you can listen to BusinessWars podcast of these two companies if you’re interested.
While these 2 auto companies were winning by producing flagship auto cars based on present requirements and most time driven by the awakening of competition.
Toyota, in contrast, have their success largely attributed to a special form of organizational culture that has outlived the company for years.
Toyota didn’t enter the automobile industry until 1937 when founder, Kiichiro Toyoda left Japan for the US to understudy the big boys. When he returned, he sold his father’s “Automatic Loom works” company and register the Toyoda automobile.
With no experience in the automobile industry, Kiichiro patiently establishes an organization culture that is today deep in the operation and has accounted for the major success of the Asian car manufacturing company.
Toyota focuses on long term: Many companies are obsessed about their next quarter numbers. Toyota generally looks twenty-five years ahead when decisions are being made. When Toyota was established, the current trend in the automobile industry in the west was about speed. Ford releases the Lincoln cars against GM’s Powerglide used in drag racing. Despite the success of these vehicles, Toyota didn’t make the choice of wastefully investing on the next power racing car of the 50s, they instead wanted to build a line of product that is cheap, efficient, durable compare to their counterparts. They wanted to focus on engines with relatively low fuel consumption. They had the customers who never knew them in mind first by turning attention away from current invocations.
In those early days, particularly in their first years, Toyota sold just about 1,500 cars in a whole year while Ford and Chevrolet control about 90% of the market. Today, I mean today, Toyota sales roughly 10M cars worldwide.
“Our foundation is stability. Our stability comes from a long-term approach.” — Gary Convis, senior executive adviser for Toyota
“Our goal isn’t to sell more cars. Our goal is to give our customers more quality. If we do a good job, our sales will go up, but our goal is not higher sales and profits. We strive to give them peace of mind. — Jim Press, former president, Toyota Motor North America
At Toyota, Quality is everyone’s responsibility: I’m really a big fan of this principle. I’ve tried to exact it with every team I’ve worked with and I won’t stop with every team I’ll still work with.
“Something is wrong if we do not look around each day, find things that are tedious or boring, and then rewrite the procedures.” — Taiichi Ohno, former Toyota executive vice president.
Small startups cash in big because they’re so good at this. Big companies like Toyota remain successful because they’ve made this part of their culture.
I keep repeating a mantra to myself and to my team; never be contented with the brilliant solution you provided yesterday. Can we reduce cost by fine-tuning it again, can we buy more time if we adjust it? Answer to these questions gives birth to innovation, Innovation that projects you to become nothing but first. When you’re satisfied with the status quo, you’re not growing, and someday, somehow, someone will run you over and crush you like the cockroach you are.
Think, Do... Rethink, Redo — Tade Samson.
The “Why” Quality Improvement Process: Toyota is famous for having a vehicle production line which can be halted immediately by anyone on the line who finds a defect. By enforcing the concept of multiple WHYs, root causes of issues are easily diagnosed and solve before progress continues. If you don’t practice this, I bet you should, it doesn’t feel convenient at first but surely, improves productivity massively going forward.
Consider this simple conversation between you and yourself
Why did that machine stop? It blew a fuse. •
Why did a fuse blow? It was the wrong size. •
Why was that fuse used? An engineer put it there. •
Why did the engineer do that? It was issued to him. •
Why was it issued to him? The stock bin for fuses was mislabeled.
Drilling down on issues this way will not only improve your know how to whatever it is. It will also ensure the fix is exactly what it should be without incurring any setback.
Mistakes may and will surely occur. Don’t be scared, it is bound to.
As rightly put, “It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.” — Samuel Smiles.
These, of course, aren’t the only two factors responsible for Toyota no #1 position in Africa and the world currently. But, I see these 2 points as imperative for any organization including startups.
They represent the core concept that divides the line between success and failure.
