No one can predict what the world will be like in the future. Yesterday’s solution may not fit tomorrow’s problem. Thus, one of the most valuable skills we can have is the ability to adapt and adjust base on what we learn from our experiences, Rother, 2018.
Mike Rother is an engineer, teacher, and researcher at the Technical University of Dortmund. Upon conducting his ethnography at the Toyota Management, he found out that there are visible things within the organization (tools and practices) but underneath in this are the less visible acts that are taken for granted (manager teaching its employees) which lead to his notion of “Kata”.
This article explores how Toyota Kata can be used as a methodology to promote social cohesion in the workplace: https://reverscore.com/toyota-kata/
The Toyota Kata
Scientific thinking is an approach that can make teams and organizations effective. In instances when things are unclear and condition in the workplace is dynamic and changeable and planning may not be enough – working together is an advantage and having the same scientific thinking is even more. The concept of Toyota Kata is to acknowledge that scientific thinking is a shared skill which does not prohibit the coercion of ideas in an organization, encouraging all hypothesis to be tested, to eventually talk about what and how to run the experiment.
The challenge of Toyota Kata is how to modify organizational culture to promote the willingness of every worker to cooperate through the “you-and-me” teaching approach.
The Learner
It is anyone willing to acquire and practice the scientific working and thinking pattern as describe by the Improvement Kata. This pattern is the everyday observation of how people tend to work and tend to learn. However, this may varies across different workplace or organization. The learner should be willing to understand the current situation to know what to do next. Nonetheless, our ideas are habitually impacted by how we take information and how we process it at first glance.
The Coach
To deliberately practice the scientific thinking comes the need of someone who is not only a model but also proficient in providing coaching support as practiced by the Coaching Kata. The coach is the one who will carry out the improvements, but should also recognize that there is a need to equally distribute the power in the organization to get more people involved to produce more adaptation strategies and innovation.
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