TOYOTA

KATA

HOME

Presentations

News and Links

Materials to Download

Extras

1.

Improvement Kata

2.

Kata Creates

Culture

What is

a Kata?

3.

How to

Teach a Kata

4.

Getting

Started

5.

Challenge

Value Stream Mapping

The improvement kata is a routine that, when practiced by the members of an organization, creates a more inventive, adaptive organization.

Building organizational capability

Practicing the improvement kata is a way of developing culture and capability for navigating dynamic and uncertain conditions.  The greater the number of people in an organization who develop skill and confidence in using the improvement kata...

        ▪ The more challenges the organization can take on

        ▪ The bigger the challenges it can take on,

        ▪ The more knowledge it can build,

        ▪ The faster it can move ahead.

The following sketch illustrates this idea:

Excerpt from The Darwin Debate, BBC, 1998

In this 30-second video,

Professor Steven Pinker

comments on culture as

a neural mechanism.

However, the improvement kata doesn't get practiced in an organization just because

you read Toyota Kata, just because the boss says so or just because it's a good idea.  Therefore the next question is:

Practicing the improvement kata changes mindset

Mindset is our subconscious way of thinking and feeling that determines how we interpret and respond to situations.  Mindset is what produces an organization's culture, i.e., the set of shared basic assumptions that operate unconsciously and govern behavior.  (Definition of organizational culture by Edgar Schein.)

So if you want to change an organization's culture, you have to change the mindset of its members (yourself included).  How do you do that?  You deliberately practice a new behavior pattern (a kata) and over time that changes your thinking.

Click here for

myths about

changing behavior

How do you teach a kata?

next -->  3. Teaching a Kata