Did you know that the PDCA cycle goes far beyond a technique for reviewing and improving processes — and that if applying the method depends entirely on “third parties” (read: consultants), you are underusing it?
In this piece I decided to revisit PDCA in practice at Toyota, after borrowing from the library The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement, by Jeffrey K. Liker and James K. Franz (2011).
PDCA stands for Plan, Do, Check, and Act (or Adjust). It was created by Walter Shewhart and popularized by William Edwards Deming, largely through his practical use and teaching of problem-solving in Japan in the 1950s. There, Deming found a keenly interested audience at Toyota, which took PDCA to a level of excellence in its application that we all ought to revisit or learn from.
What Toyota understood — and the West copied wrong
When we study good books on Lean Manufacturing and the Toyota Way, we understand how essential cultural change is to any improvement effort on any factory floor. PDCA is no different. In The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement, Liker and Franz issue a pointed warning: how dangerous it was for the Western world to simply “copy” and implement models with a short-term view, under pressure for quick results.
The consultant who delivers a report, and the one who delivers culture
My warning today is against consultants who aren’t especially interested in leaving a “legacy” of cultural transformation — who make their money merely supporting a process review to present a report, or running the implementation of a corrective action plan. Good consultants make things happen; the excellent ones lead the company to transformation.
I reproduce in full a comparison — drawn from Liker and Franz’s book — between the PDCA “tool” so common in consulting work and PDCA at Toyota:
It is clear that Eastern culture and the long-term corporate outlook of Japanese industry are allies of a truly effective continuous-improvement process. The senior leadership of Western companies is heavily pressured by shareholders who simply don’t understand investing in capability-building and cultural change for long-term results.
Ready-made answers have an expiration date
The truth is that it makes no sense to hire capable consultants for detailed diagnostics and “ready-made” answers about a company’s future: Who is my target audience? What should my distribution logistics look like? What is the exceptional sales methodology for my company’s future? Should I replace my physical card system on the production line with an electronic kanban?
An exceptional consultant’s first answer to these questions is: It depends. In today’s environment, many variables can affect a decision, and a transformation mindset revisits decisions periodically. The exceptional consultant will present action plans and answers for that moment — but will support the company in a transformation mindset and sustain that support over the long term, above all to maintain the new culture, acting as a business coach to ensure the new skills and capabilities have truly been absorbed not only by senior leadership but disseminated into the company’s DNA.