John Shook on culture change at NUMMI

John Shook writes about NUMMI and culture change.  I've excerpted some of my favourite sections below:

Define the things we want to do, the ways we want to behave and want each other to behave, provide training, and then do what is necessary to reinforce those behaviors. The culture will change as a result.

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A cornerstone of Respect for People is the conviction that all employees have the right to be successful every time they do their job. Part of doing their job is finding problems and making improvements. If we as management want people to be successful, to find problems, and make improvements, we have the obligation to provide the means to do so.

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"You intend to give these workers the right to stop the line?" they asked. Toyota’s answer: "No, we intend to give them the obligation to stop whenever they find a problem."

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Being very smart, young GM managers, they had a ready response whenever Mr. Uchikawa would ask them to report on how things were proceeding - "No problem!" The last thing they wanted was their boss sticking his nose into their problems. Finally Mr. Uchikawa exploded, "No Problem is problem! Managers' job is to see problems!"

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Perhaps most importantly, could it be that GM's sense of its very purpose has been utterly different from Toyota's? The question of "What are we here for?" is an important one for an organization, and one that receives remarkably inadequate attention. I suggest that the difference in purpose between GM and Toyota can be summed up simply: Are we here to survive to make money or make money to survive?