Want the secret sauce behind Toyota and Danaher's success
… they purposefully state their priorities, their approach, and their principles.
They didn’t just state them, they repeated them in meetings and presentations. They reiterated them in the midst of problems. They preached them like a sermon to people both inside and outside of their company.
Why does this matter?
Whether you state them explicitly or they are implied by daily decisions and conversations - they provide the needed reference for prioritizing work, decisions, and the application of your actual business.
Toyota laid out a simple yet powerful 4P model as the basis for their approach.
- Philosophy
- Process
- People
- Problem Solving
Their philosophy was all about long-term thinking. With that as the foundation, they then created processes to eliminate wasteful time, material, energy, and resources. While doing that, they wanted a culture of respect, but also one where people challenged each other and wanted to grow, not only individually, but as a team. Finally, they wanted continuous improvement in all areas of the company through proper problem-solving.
This idea was the basis for 14 specific management principles that governed the very ethos of the company and allowed them to run an extremely effective operation.
Years later Danaher created their own version of the 4P model known as the Danaher Business System which included:
- People
- Plan
- Process
- Performance
For them, these 4 aspects of their company worked together to create outstanding results. As they put it
… exceptional PEOPLE develop outstanding PLANS and execute them using world-class tools to construct sustainable PROCESSES, resulting in superior PERFORMANCE. Superior performance and high expectations attract exceptional people, who continue the cycle.
Having a simple way to encapsulate your culture, your philosophy, and your approach won’t in and of itself transform anything in your business. What it does is make it easier to remember, to reiterate, to preach it over and over again until it becomes ingrained in every aspect of your business.
So what are your values? What are your foundational concepts, or what I call “core tenants” that you are building everything on?
