Harvard, Toyota, and the Rest of the Story

by BILL WADDELL

The piece I wrote last week concerning the elite Eastern colleges and their misguided stranglehold on the American economy raised a bit of a stir, including a contrarian opinion from a long time valuable member of the Evolving Excellence community, Costikyan Jarvis.  Costikyan is a good guy and a good manufacturer and it is hard to find fault with him, but he is a New Englander, so being contrary and stubborn come naturally to him. 

Costikyan is the 5th generation to keep things moving in the right direction at Jarvis Cutting Tools, and he went to an MBA program at Harvard, and, before that, a couple of other highfalutin eastern schools.  Maybe he's right and they taught him everything he needs to know to keep Jarvis Cutting Tools on top of their game, but my money says that when the going gets tough (as it always does for everyone and every company sooner or later) the 20 year or so year apprenticeship Costikyan served under his dad, Marshall, is what is going to get him and Jarvis Tools through.

In any event, Costikyan correctly pointed out that the new boss at Toyota - Akio Toyoda - went to a Massachusetts school for his MBA.

Let me get one thing straight.  I have no issue with schools or people from any place, and I apologize if using the Google Map graphic to make a point led some to think that I am down on the east.  It is the elite private schools that so dominate I have a problem with.  There's a guy named Larry Grasso at Central Connecticut State U - about a half hour north of Yale in New Britain, CT - who is out on the front edge of lean thinking.  Larry is teaching kids lean accounting in a public school.  Down the road, Yale is teaching the Skull and Bone boys in the MBA program that "Knowing how to analyze and redesign existing processes, design new processes, make a case for change, implement change in an organization, and use IT/IS to make it all happen are key skills for managers, consultants and entrepreneurs." 

C'mon folks - "using IT/IS to make it all happen" is a "key skill"?

So Costikyan, when you say that these schools attract the best professors, that is only because they get to define "best professor".  Fact is, they attract more professors like the ones they already have.  The President of Harvard is from Penn; the Dean of the Business School is from Cornell and, you guessed it, Harvard.  Of the 12 folks that specialize in Operations Management, there are 6 Ivy Leaguers, 3 from MIT, a Carnegie Melon, a Cambridge and a token westerner from Stanford.  As I said - they have decided that the best is them - and they only hire the best, hence the inbreeding problem.

They don't want guys like Larry Grasso.  He went to Utica College, for cryin' out loud, and landed at Central Conn via Arizona State - that perennial contender for Playboy Magaizine's award for the best party school in America.  That isn't Ivy League material.  But real live manufacturing managers pay good money every year to listen to what Larry has to say at the Lean Accounting Summmit because he is telling them very specific things they can do right now that help them become leaner and save money.

But I digress ... let's get back to Toyota, and Mr. Akio Toyoda.  To Costikyan's point, he went to Babson College in Boston. (Babson's a fine place - their President is a Harvard man.)  But it gets worse than that. Akio went to law school first.  Then, armed with his law degree and his expensive MBA, he went to work for Merrill Lynch investment banking in New York, and then went on to work as a consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton.  Same path I slammed as the one that creates the sort of thinkers and thinking that are leading us down the road to ruin.

But a funny thing happened next in Akio's career: After Booz Allen assigned him to an auto industry project, he stopped and thought, "My question to myself was who am I? People look at me and think I am an expert in the automobile industry and I am not."  What ???  A high-priced consultant with an elite MBA acknowledging that he is not an expert???

He openly admits that he went into law and the MBA program because he isn't "smart enough to be an engineer"

But the story gets better.  He quits Booz Allen and goes back to Japan to ask his father, Shoichiro Toyoda who was President of Toyota at the time, and is the son of Toyota founder Kiichiro Toyoda, for a job.

His father tells him that no one at Toyota wants him because he has no useful skills and his last name would make him a burden.  The only way into Toyota was the entry level management training program with all the rest of the new hires.  So in he goes and 25 years later he makes it to the top.

The moral of the story is that Mr. Toyoda is now the top dog at Toyota in spite of his Boston/Babson education - not because of it.

So Costikyan, I'll make you a wager. Let's test whether the Ivy League has any sense of manufacturing reality.  You and your Dad go to the Machine Tool Show every two years in Chicago, which is the most important gathering manufacturing has concerning the state and application of technology.  I attend the Lean Summit every year, which has evolved to be the most important gathering lean has regarding financial and managerial optimization.  If either of us spots an Ivy Leaguer at either show - either teaching or learning - other than you, of course - then you win.  I will retract my piece and buy you and your dad dinner anywhere you choose in Greektown.  If we can't find a single one, however, then you are buying, and I plan to be a very expensive date.

Comments

["Appalachian American"]

Bill,

Thanks for the history lesson on Akio.

I kind of like a consulting outfit with the first name Booz. It probably took the marketing folks some time on that one.

I'm still not sure 25 years was enough, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt.

[Jim Huntzinger]

Dead on Bill! Excellent piece.

[Costikyan Jarvis]

First, I would say that, in my opinion, your education has little to do with your professional achievements. I believe it is a person ability to continuously learn various disciplines, both in formal (academic) settings and informal (life) settings. I think Mr. Akio Toyoda is well training for his future challenges because of the fact that he is a lawyer, has a MBA and has a manufacturing background. He has shown the ability to be humble (he started over in an entry level position) and to re-train himself. These skills are rare, but can be found at Harvard and your local technical school.

Second, in regards to the wager, I can not accept it because I know I will win.

One of my classmates is president of Boston Centerless (http://www.bostoncenterless.com/). Boston Centerless has had a booth at the last several IMTS shows and won the Northeast Shingo Prize for the lean efforts.

I would like to up the ante. I will find at least 6 people who went to the “highfalutin eastern schools” that you talked about (both Ivy League and boarding schools) who are attending IMTS and/or the Lean Summit. If I find them, you owe me dinner, you need to retract your piece and write a piece on the punitive aspects of the death tax on family businesses.

Last time I was in Chicago I had dinner at graham elliot (http://www.grahamelliot.com/) and was good. Next time I go, I look forward to you paying.

[Tom]

It seems to me that those educated from the "elite" schools have two choices, much as Akio did. First, to stay in the elite sytem inbreeding the culture that has been taught over and over again. Second, is to have some sort of "awakening" like Aiko, that maybe there is more to being an expert then just saying you are.

The Ivy League grads who show up at these shows (and I bet there are many) are not the ones who are staying in the system moving to the top of the instutional powers (educational and political). They are the ones who have realized something more, have found some "useful skill" and started applying it in the real world.

The real prize is not to find those people who have left the system to find a better way(like Akio), but to find people who know the better way getting into the system to transform it (like Grasso).

[Bill Waddell]

You're right, Tom. Akio Toyoda's 'epiphany moment' made all the difference. He demonstrated a very rare humility.

In fairness to Harvard and the rest - and especially in fairness to my friend Costigyan Jarvis - the problem stems from those who never do anything productive prior to getting their Ivy League MBA and heading off to the consulting world to lecture manufacturing management.

Many, many grads of these MBA programs are people who went through an 'Executive MBA' program after having been in the real world for a spell. They often have the wisdom and knowledge to leaven the Ivy League nonsense with common sense.

That said, I still believe that they would be better off seeing if Larry Grasso teaches a night school class in accounting.

[onparkstreet]

I graduated from the University of Iowa College of Medicine, attended a Catholic teaching hospital for residency, did my fellowship at Stanford, and was a physician at a Harvard teaching hospital for about five years.

Define best. I'm serious about that, how does one define best? The Harvard MBA program may very well be the best, I don't know I'm not an MBA. The issue isn't whether Harvard is the best or not, it's the issue that sometimes credentialism rules over actual experience and accomplishments in some areas of public life.

What I disliked most when I was at Harvard (and, I met wonderful, talented people there, really fine physicians) is a bit of parochialism that I encountered. There were some faculty who had never left the environment and were sure that they way they did things were the best. But, I'd say, how do you know since you've never experienced anything else? I'm not a Harvard basher, I just think excellence exists in lots of places.

[Jim]

Reading The Black Swan and this is a recurring theme. Suits and pedigrees do not necessarily create the best outcomes. Favorite quote so far in the book -- "Don't confuse success with talent". Also, Goldratt points to this in his recent lectures...need to stay focused on cause and effect and the highly addictive and sexy craze of "modeling".

[Scion]

Akio went to Babson. Not an elite school, per se, but in the same geographic area as other elite schools.

But wherever he went to school, and whatever public legend has been concocted and spoon-fed to the press, make no mistake about it -- the family name plays a huge role in his rapid ascent to the top.

Do you really think a company as conservative and traditional as Toyota would have named a non-Toyoda family member to be CEO below the tender age of 50?

[Bill Waddell]

Well Mr. Scion, two thirds of the folks who line up to pay more than $50K a year to matriculate at Babson get turned away. If that ain't elite, it sure is close.

Concerning the Toyoda family, in fact the family owns less than 1% of the company. The family has no birthright at Toyota any longer. The non-family people in charge for the last several have encountered some rough sailing. My view is that they have elevated Kiichiro Toyoda's grandson to help them get back to their roots.

What's up with hiding behind a ficticious name and hurling the silly, unsupported accusation that I have printed a "concocted legend" that was "spoon fed" to me? Whoever you are, you can do better than that.

[Ken McGuire]

Bill:
Why so bitter and dismissive of hallowed halls you've never walked? And where is the 'respect for people' for those whose vocation has a different focus from yours? Also, could your story line on Toyoda-san be a case of 'tatamae and ohmae' where the revealed personna and the true feelings differ in deferrence to the recipient?
Because manufacturing is becoming such a declining proportion of life's future challenges, perhaps the higher learning institutions are catering to the "A"items like medicine, governance, mitigation, and capital formation. Thus leaving the study of 'making things better' to those places where self interest is better served thru proximity to the gemba?
Or maybe the market attraction to the best and the brightest persuades them to seek higher rewards, and draws them to areas outside the arena you view as the highest priority occupation. They can contribute their talent to the advance of mankind there too.
Keep up the zeal for lean with your audience, but don't disrespect others because the audience is not larger.

[Bill Waddell]

Never in one brief post has a reader chanted the mantra at us so eloquently ... and demonstrated grander ignorance of lean manufacturing ... all at the same time.

Have another long sip of the kool-aid, my friend, and stay focused on those A items.

[matt mcknight]

From a disinterested third party, your rant against selective schools is quite confusing. On the one hand you criticize the professorship for something, and then you extend the criticism to the graduates. A basic application of signaling theory would perhaps help you understand why it is the selectivity itself which drives the value of the schools, by their performance of an assessment of individuals. There is much to criticize in academia, but limiting your criticism to selective schools is not supported by your arguments. It would be better to focus on the facts.