Engaging the Team at Zingerman's Mail Order: A Toyota Kata Comic

After decades of implementing lean tools, organizations are getting serious about the heart and soul of the Toyota Way. They are developing people to continuously improve. Most of the lean tools, such as kanban, andon, and visual management, are designed to surface problems so engaged people can solve them one by one. Toyota's underlying assumption is that the world is complex and uncertain, and we never have the perfect solution, so whatever is implemented needs continual refinement as we learn the many ways it can fail. In addition, organizations are dynamic and, even if we had the perfect solution today (which is impossible), it would have many flaws as conditions change.

This book builds on Lean in a High-Variability Business. It is a shorter, focused introduction to developing scientific thinking through deliberate practice using kata. There are kata for the learner trying to change how they approach problems to a more systematic, scientific approach and kata for the coach trying to teach them by helping them work toward actual goals. The focus is on the HOW of developing engaging managers and supervisors who in turn can develop an engaged workforce. There are many books about why engagement is important and descriptions of best practices, but few provide practical guidance on how to achieve it. And there are none presented in a comic book or graphic form. It is only through deliberate practice that we can develop a new, habitual way of thinking to avoid jumping to conclusions and let the facts and evidence guide us.