Maybe you read this week about Toyota’s problems? And its recall of over 5 million vehicles? And how they have stopped selling certain cars until they fix the accelerator problem that may turn these vehicles into bullet trains?
You must’ve. Heck, there is a good chance that you or someone you know is impacted by the recall.
I love this line from the WSJ’s article:
On Nov. 4, the [NHTSA] issued an unusual rebuke of Toyota, saying the company released misleading information about a plan to recall some 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles…
Apparently, Toyota hasn’t been keeping up with the latest biz fads to roll out of social media, specifically with regards to authenticity and transparency.
Seems that instead, Toyota is kicking it old school.
FAIL.
When you build your reputation around one thing, then you protect that one thing. You do not play games with your reputation in the area where you need to be squeaky cleanest. For instance, if we were to take, I dunno, say… TOYOTA, and look at what Toyota built its reputation on, I think we’d find near consensus that the company’s reputation has been build around quality. Toyota is studied by manufacturing plants the world over who want to emulate the firm’s capacity for creating ongoing improvements in both process and product. You know, that whole “relentless pursuit of perfection” thing they talked about for ten plus years, before going beyond even that.
As suggested by the Wall Street Journal, Toyota seems to have forgotten that reputations must be earned. When called out on a potential problem by regulators, instead of addressing it immediately, Toyota got a little prickly and said, basically, “Step off! Don’t you know who we are?!”
Sounds like some company fell in love with its own marketing.
The lesson here is this: if there’s something you do better than anything else, protect that. And by all means, if you ever receive feedback, like Toyota did, that you are having problems in your core area, embrace the feedback! Just because it’s your best quality doesn’t mean it’s objectively great all the time. Be humble, listen, and act.
There is no need for Toyota to have failed here. Especially if they heard about this issue in early November of last year. For Pete’s sake, they sat on a potentially life-threatening quality problem for 2.5 months?!
Were they waiting for the magic reputation fairy to make the problem go away?
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(I’m not exactly impartial here. I’m rooting for the home team. So let me close the issue of Toyota with this: Go get ‘em home team! And you, too, other home team! Go, America… go!)
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Final thought: FAIL hat tip to this half-baked article that (1) can’t figure out if it’s news or op/ed, (2) makes a ham-fisted attempt to equate two very different recalls (Toyota and Tylenol), and (3) pulls the rip cord on itself in the middle of a thought.
At least that last problem mercifully brought the “article” to a close.
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I'm Jason. I make people shine. My mission is to help 1 million people tell their stories better. 
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