Toyota Kata


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Keynote: Kata Talk: The Chutes and Ladders of Continuous Improvement

Building KQ – your ability to improve through deliberate practice

Meryl Runion and Mike Rother join forces for a dynamic keynote or breakout you will remember and talk about.

Mike Rother Toyota Kata

You’ve known about IQ – Intelligence Quotients – from grade school. You learned about EQ – Emotional Intelligence – in the 90s.

But how about KQ – Kata Quotients?

Do you even know you have one, let alone how high it is? Welcome to the next level of continuous improvement.

Presented by communication author and researcher Meryl Runion and Toyota Kata researcher and author Mike Rother, this session was the hit of the Lean conference NEShingoPrize.

Why? Because in its lighthearted and entertaining way, it walks you through

  • the kinds of conversations and phrases that can inspire brilliant insights
  • the kinds that can suppress them

And you thought emotional intelligence in business was cutting edge!

Yes, emotional intelligence in effective communication makes significant difference. But that’s not the real secret of Toyota and employee empowerment.

Your KQ – Kata Quotient – takes your improvement efforts to the next level

This keynote or breakout session combines Mike Rother’s Toyota Kata and Meryl Runion’s SpeakStrong Method to give deep understanding of the unseen mechanism behind Toyota’s improvement successes – of Toyota and employee empowerment. Learn how to empower others: what to say and what not to say to develop your own and other’s ability to learn through practice.

Plus, you’ll get insight into your personal KQ when you navigate the Chutes and Ladders of Continuous Improvement. This session both tests and enhances your ability to navigate the chutes and ladders of continuous improvement. 

You’ll learn how to stay in the “kata corridor” to reach new levels of excellence. 

You’ll have choices at every step of this journey

Will your response lead you to climb the Ladder of Learning toward your next target condition? Or will you slide down the Chute of Conjecture toward terminal mediocrity? Will the pull be with you, moving you up the path? Or will force foil you and send you sliding? How does high KQ turn even the worst slide into a learning opportunity to guide the next step?

Get the on-the-ground guidance you want and need to practice continuous improvement Toyota Kata and SpeakStrong style.

Key takeaways from this session include:

  • What the adaptive thinking underlying Toyota Kata is
  • How to know if you’re inside or outside the kata corridor
  • How to develop inquiry skills
  • What phrases move the Toyota Kata discovery process forward and what phrases inhibit it

 

By the way, Dwight Bowen of GBMP said it was probably the best session he had ever attended.

Could your next event use an infusion of deep learning that’s fun? Contact Meryl about KataTalk. 

Lean PowerPhrase: How do you want the process to operate?

PowerPhrase IconIf you manage the means instead of the result, a powerful phrase for you is:

  • How do you want the process to operate?

 

Managing by results asks about outcome. What are you trying to accomplish? Managing by means asks about the process that acheives the outcome, and is one of the secrets of Toyota’s competative edge.

You can read more about managing the process here.

Kata Talk: Navigate the Chutes and Ladders of Continuous Improvement

Kata Talk: Navigate the Chutes and Ladders of Continuous Improvement 

 This is a learning session that Mike Rother and I premiered at a GBMP conference in Springfield. It’s designed to get leaders and managers into the mindset of what they need to do to develop and guide continuous improvement. This session is interactive and was a big hit.