yama v0.22: Toyota Way, Framework for Business

I’ve structured my personal and business into two distinct things. I have my business study and I have my personal study. This is a bit of a problem as I don’t have a framework I am optimizing my business around. I have the Yoga Sutras as a framework for life, but we live life within a society. Our work and our output into the greater civilization matters. As part of my study and practice I had largely ignored this larger framework.

I was chasing from different frameworks and figuring out different ones from Amazon, Toyota, Koch, Apple, etc. The problem is that it leads to a scattered approach to improving business processes. A business framework is just as important to find and stick with as a religious system of thought. While I do love various aspects of Christianity I don't usually apply them into my religious thought processes. This is because having multiple systems causes a lot of issues as the theological basis and models are completely different.

My scattered approach to business is because I don't have a standardized framework that I use. This leads to continuously changing track and not having a cohesive system to fall back upon. I do things that are fun and heroic, but may not be effective. I need a comprehensive business philosophy that I follow through on and base the foundation of my business around.

This foundation will be Lean and the foundational text will be the Toyota Way. The Toyota Production Method and the Lean system tie in well with the continuous improvement aspect of Yoga. The nature of these two being similar is quite important. It is based on long term thinking and process over heroics.

It is because of this I am going to standardize on The Toyota Way as the primary business guide. In most ways Lean has become a part of society and how things are developed. Build and reduce waste through processes. But the shorttermism of MBA programs are still a massive driver. The nice thing about our business is we are not driven by short term but can focus on 5-10 years in the future. This allows us to think in much longer timeframes. The way we survive for the long term is to focus on what we are good at and gradually eliminate all forms of waste.

However, I think Toyota has still one of the best processes in the world to gradually build out new consistent features. This seems to also be incorporated into Apple, Amazon and Koch as all three have taken huge lessons from the traditional lean method. Amazon seems to have forgotten it though. Further, So the Toyota Way seems to be a practical guide for implementing the type of company I admire in the first place. A company built on slow continuous improvement which ties in with what the Yoga Sutras say.

One can say that the Toyota Way is not timeless like the other texts I have. That is true, it isn’t but it does have a practical implementation based on modern technologies and operationalizing the current world. Not everything has to be timeless, technology changes and business adapts. Lean is built for the world that we currently inhabit. It may change as JIT may lose relevance once American power wanes, but for the time being it is the text that we have.