It is interesting to note that very few Toyota executives show up on the lists of most influential business leaders in the automotive industry. This seems a bit strange considering that Toyota is the world’s most successful car company. Maybe the reason is that Toyota, much more than most other companies, is focused on process improvement or Kaizen, over a long period of time. The personality type best suited to sustain a high level of performance is the farmer as opposed to the quick-fix hero. Jim Womack of the Lean Enterprise Institute had this to say:

“Heroes shouldn’t be necessary once an organization is transformed. Instead every important process should be steadily tended by a “farmer” (who we often call a value-stream manager) who continually asks three simple questions: Is the business purpose of the process correctly defined? Is action being steadily taken to create value, flow, and pull in every step of the process while taking out waste? Are all of the people touching the process actively engaged in making it better? This is the gemba mentality of the farmer who year after year plows a straight furrow, mends the fence, and obsesses about the weather, even as the heroic pioneer or hunter who originally cleared the land moves on.”