Friday, March 02, 2007

The Church Needs Toyota

The Big Three auto makers are closing plants, laying off workers and losing billions of dollars. But not Toyota. Why?
One of the differences is the Big Three's ethos of change. It's discontinuous. A change is a big deal, gets a power-point and publicity splashes across the company.

But not Toyota. Changing the process continually is simply part of the way they see the world. A 1% change by the end of the month (all the time) is de rigeur rather than shooting for 15% by the end of the quarter. And not only that, problems are expected and talked about. "Problems first" is one of their mottos.

What if the church was the same way? We are a lot like the Big Three. We grab the latest model, program fad and make a big splash. What if we went for continuos improvement and tweaking? "How can we do that a little better" instead of "what program, tool, idea will change everything?"

Check out the article from Fast Company.