Learning from Toyota’s 70-Year Head Start

It’s time for a business system (sounds boring — is fun — I promise) 🕴

What do you want from work? Money, success, admiration, ✨development✨, company branded socks, 20,000 LinkedIn followers, a premium Calendly account and a Superhuman subscription…?

I’ve been kind of plagued with this question the last few years. If work is a product (and I believe it is) then it must be doing something for us. Some of us choose to work within our creative pursuits to get fulfillment, while others prioritise finances to get security. Some get both without much effort. For the rest of us, we have to operate our search for the “right job” a little like the search for the “right apartment” in New York. This, of course, meaning we have to write a list of the most important three to five things, and accept, like a monk, that at least two will never happen.

There are a few things I don’t personally want to compromise on at work: respect, dignity, and sustainability. I want to be treated respectfully like a person, do tasks that achieve something useful, and that won’t, I dunno, fuck things up even more (not necessarily saving the world, but at least a net positive!). Figuring out how to package these ideas up and share them in a snappy LinkedIn post or usable piece of ✨thought leadership✨ (sickening phrase) has kind of evaded me because it’s just, like, obvious, man.

I’m not going to lie to you, sometimes when I sit down to write I feel like I’ve strip-mined every possible source of operational wisdom that may be interesting to you as a reader — from agile methodologies to WBRs to whatever framework is trending on Twitter this week. And then there’s Toyota, sitting on 70 years of operational expertise, practically begging me to learn from them.

That’s the thing about searching for answers…without sounding too trite (sure, maybe a little), inspiration strikes us in unusual places. It’s why places like r/showerthoughts exist and why we have those walking desks in offices. Every great idea stands on the shoulders of other ideas. True creativity is a fabrication, emergent, and the most exciting concepts tend to pop up in unexpected places rather than entirely new ones.

This is how I stumbled upon what might be the most interesting operational framework I’ve encountered in the last few years (am I slow? Yes. Am I sharing it to thousands of readers, also Yes). During an interview for my upcoming second book my friend Emory Sullivan started talking about her journey founding a company that builds AI tools for manufacturing workers. She’s one of those rare founders who built something exceedingly, jealousy-inducingly useful — not another crypto project or advertising app (sorry), but technology that makes real work better for working people who make real things we all use.

Her eyes lit up as she explained how Toyota’s approach to operations wasn’t just about efficiency — it was about dignity and craftsmanship at work. Now we’re talking. She walked me through how Toyota had built a system that simultaneously improved quality, reduced waste, and — most importantly — made work better for the people doing it.

As she spoke, I couldn't help but think about all the startups I'd worked with where I think I'd gotten things wrong. We pride ourselves on innovative technology and ambitious missions, while a decades-old manufacturing system had already made progress in solving problems we're still struggling with: building systems that help our people do their best work consistently and sustainably.

The Toyota Production System rests on three principles:

• Kaizen (continuous improvement) isn’t about big transformational changes — it’s about creating space for workers to improve their own processes, bit by bit, every day. It’s the opposite of top-down transformation programs that often fail.
• “Respect for people” sounds obvious until you really examine it. It means designing systems around human capabilities and limitations. It means trusting your front-line workers to identify and solve problems. Most importantly, it means making their work easier and more meaningful, not just more efficient.
• Eliminating waste isn’t about cost-cutting — it’s about removing anything that gets in the way of good work. The unnecessary meetings, the unclear documentation, the knowledge trapped in silos, the processes that exist “because we’ve always done it that way.”

Toyota developed these principles out of necessity, competing with limited resources against better-funded rivals. It’s not unlike the position many startups find themselves in today.

How does every blog I ever write also exist somewhere in the Simpsons universe? Kismet.

What makes their system powerful isn’t any individual practice — whether that’s just-in-time production, built-in quality, standardised work, or visual management. It’s how these elements work together to create an environment where good work happens naturally, and feels less contrived to those doing it on the ‘front lines’.

I’ve been thinking and reading more about the TPS over the last few weeks, and couldn’t help but write something that (I think) helps move Operations in that same direction. I was inspired to figure out how to run a workshop that helps our teams create their own business system. Not by copying Toyota, but by understanding these core principles and adapting them to your context.

Why Your Team Needs a Business System

Let’s be real: most companies are a mess. Not the fun, creative kind of mess that leads to innovation, but the exhausting kind where everyone’s working harder than they need to because basic things keep falling through the cracks. In part this is what I love about Operations, but this love can turn to hate when the chaos turns from “This is a fun problem that continues to evolve in new and exciting ways” and into “This is a problem I see every day that I cannot possibly solve without fantasising about running away from it all and starting a new life.”

Here’s what I see over and over again:

A team doubles in size, and suddenly no one knows how anything works. The person who “just knew how to do it” left six months ago, and their replacement is still trying to piece together their process from scattered Slack messages. Meetings are starting to sound like a broken record of “we need to document this better” and “we should create a process for that.”

Meanwhile, your best people are burning out. Not because the work is too hard, but because they’re spending half their time reinventing wheels that shouldn’t need reinventing. Every new hire means explaining the same things from scratch. Every project feels like starting from zero.

And let’s talk about that mythical balance between “moving fast” and “doing things right.” You want to maintain that scrappy startup energy that got you here, but you also need things to actually… work. Your customers and team aren’t impressed by your “move fast and break things” ethos when it’s their things getting broken.

This is exactly where a business system comes in. Not another complex framework that looks good in theory but falls apart in practice. Not another tool that everyone has to learn and no one actually uses. But a real, living system that:

1. Makes the right way the easy way: Instead of relying on heroic effort and tribal knowledge, good practices become the default. When someone asks “how do we do X?” there’s a clear answer, not a treasure hunt through Google Docs.
2. Reduces cognitive overhead: Your team’s brain power should go to solving interesting problems, not remembering where that one document is or which Slack channel to post in. A good business system handles the routine so people can focus on what matters.
3. Scales with you: Every new hire doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel. Training becomes about building on a solid foundation, not trying to download years of context from overwhelmed teammates.
4. Preserves what works: Those brilliant solutions your team comes up with? They don’t vanish when someone goes on vacation or takes a new job. They become part of how you work.

Crucially, you can’t just copy someone else’s system. What works for a 50-year-old manufacturing company won’t work unchanged for your AI startup. What works for a remote-first SaaS company won’t work for a hybrid hardware team. Because the goal isn’t to create a perfect system (spoiler: it doesn’t exist). The goal is to make work better — more manageable, more sustainable, and yes, even more enjoyable — for the people doing it.

The 2-Hour Business System Workshop (Templates Included)

Goal: Create a simple but effective business system that makes work better for your team.

Pre-work (Send 3 days before)

Have everyone read the Toyota Production System article here. Also ask that you focus on the “core business” process. If Toyota was manufacturing cars, your should be developing a product, or resourcing a consulting team, or creating new advertisements for clients. You can, of course, apply the same system philosophy to your other non-core business, but focussing on “where the work is done” (meaning, the crucial team that delivers value to your customers) is priority numero-uno.

Ask everyone to write down and bring along:

1. One process that frustrates them most
2. One thing that works surprisingly well
3. One “if only we could…” wish

Hour 1: Discovery & Principles

Opening (10 mins)

• Quick intro to Toyota principles, ask “write the 2 things you took away from what you’ve learned about the TPS”
• Ground rules: we’re focusing on making work better, not perfect

Activity 1: Pain Point Mapping (25 mins)

1. Everyone writes their top 3 pain points on sticky notes (5 mins)
2. Quick share — the number one pain point each (10 mins)
3. Your team are able to +1 if they also had another of the same someone else mentioned as their number one.
4. Group them into themes (10 mins)

• Look for patterns
• Focus on systemic issues, not one-off problems

Activity 2: Bright Spots (25 mins)

Same activity, but focussed on the most effective parts of your current process. Everyone shares one thing that works well and, crucially, WHY that works so well. (10 mins)

• What makes it work?
• Why does this feel good?
• What could we learn from this and apply to the above pain points?

Extract principles from these examples (15 mins)

• What patterns do we see in the things that work?
• How could we apply these elsewhere?

Hour 2: Design & Action

Activity 1: System Design (30 mins) Take the top 3 pain points identified earlier. I would suggest you focus on the ones which, if solved, would have the biggest revenue, efficiency, or quality impact for customers.

For each one:

1. What would “good” look like? (5 mins)
2. What’s the minimum change needed? (10 mins)
3. How will we know it’s working? (5 mins)
4. Who needs to be involved? (10 mins)

Activity 2: Action Planning (25 mins)

For each solution identified:

• What’s the first small step?
• Who owns it?
• When will it happen?

Then, to keep yourself honest, spend 10 minutes to quickly set up a review schedule and define one simple output metric for each change.

Closing (5 mins)

• Recap actions and owners
• Schedule first review session
• Quick round to close: one thing you’re excited to try

Making Work Easier on the Front Lines

The outcome of this workshop should be something like this:

Imagine you’re the founder of a company selling photographs of (only the cutest) cats. It’s a goldmine, believably so, that has been growing at a wild 100% YOY for the last three years. That said, you’re seeing an ongoing landslide of issues. Your team are out in the field taking photos of cats every day, but the more team-members you add, the more you seem to lose — attrition is a problem. Further, where before a new team member could offer 100 pictures of cats a week, somehow that is crawling to just under 70. Your back office spend is swelling, but you cannot quite work out how to solve the problems being faced by those who are doing the work.

When creating your Business System in this situation, the company would be able to identify that the processes which is most important (and also most frustrating) is being assigned a cat to photograph, and ensuring the photographer has all of the equipment they need. At present, the team needs to pick through an inbox of options to find the one closest to them, and then message their manager to check in on which equipment matches the style of the shoot. Together these two tasks make up around 30% of day-to-day of the people most crucial in the production of your cat photographs.

A business like this would want to institute something like:

More time with cats. What can we do to make our photographers spend as much time with cats as possible? What work is taking them away from this fundamental part of their role?

Consistency in tools. How do we ensure that our team knows what they need and has what they need for each task, ideally through self-service or shared knowledge.

Delightful messaging. How do we make the transference of new or changing information delightful and easy?

Quick-Fix Solutions

Want to implement something like this, but aren’t quite ready to go the whole nine yards with the system, workshop etc? Well, to create exceptional experiences on your “front line” tools will be a huge part of this.

When running your RFP or assessment for a new tool to solve a crucial company problem (communications, learning, or workflows) it is important to include not just practical and cost friendly solutions, but ones that actually are making work better. There are millions of tools for communications and documents, but Notion took the world by storm due to it’s user experience. Similarly, L&D platforms that run on check-boxes and PDFs are a dime-a-dozen, but Sana is growing at an astronomical rate. Seek tools in these crucial workflows that help your team not just practically, but take the work out of “work” by ensuring delightful, easy interactions.

Tools and Automation

• Using Sana to create an accessible knowledge base
• Build “just-in-time” learning into workflows so that the team are able to unblock themselves quickly and effectively
• Creating clear decision-making frameworks such as RACI and documenting them on your internal communications tool
• Identify repetitive tasks for automation and use Zapier or API calls to remove human administration wherever necessary

Closing thoughts: Remember, at its core, this isn’t about tools or frameworks or even efficiency. It’s about dignity and respect for the people doing the work. It’s about creating systems that make work feel less like a grind and more like craftsmanship.

Start small. Focus on one pain point that’s causing the most friction for your team. Make it better. Then move on to the next one. That’s kaizen — continuous improvement — and it’s more powerful than any grand transformation.

I’d love to hear how these ideas land with you. What’s one small change you’re planning to make this week?

Ok that’s all from me, folks. 👋

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Me and my cat, looking professional