Quotes from H. Thomas Johnson

This line of thought led Toyota (and others) to conclude, eventually, that it often is more profitable to empower workers to be flexible "learning machines" than it is to invest in new capital equipment.

Forty years of emphasizing accounting-style control over things has seen American businesses do little or nothing to develop the capabilities of people. Workers have been viewed as a source of energy and cost, not as a source of ideas.

R&D is a special class of spending that often is equated, mistakenly, with investment spending. Investments presume knowledge, albeit imperfect, about future costs and returns. R&D represents an effort to gain a stake in future opportunities before anything is known about future costs and returns.

But people can not move a company toward competitive excellence if they are rewarded for meeting top-down accounting-based targets, not for continuously seeking better ways to satisfy customers, internal and external.

Learning implies that every person in every process must have the freedom to observe and identify change and have the power to recommend opportunities for improvement.

But only by making workers into thinkers and doers will firms inspire workers to excel.

To maximize return on investment is an inadequate statement of purpose. It fails to accomplish the paramount responsibility of leadership—to provide meaning and inspiration to those who are expected to follow. The mass of people within our corporations are not primarily motivated by maximizing private gain. Many firms are structured as if they were….

Running a business with the customer in charge requires total dedication to becoming flexible.

Globally competitive companies don't eschew profit or financial well-being, but they do not believe businesses achieve financial goals by using accounting variables to control people's work. They see employees as a source of learning, not as a cost.

Businesses are beginning to realize that customer-focused empowerment of the work force is the key to world-class competitiveness in the information age.

A work force empowered to learn and innovate must be the backbone of a strategy to create flexibility by removing constraints.

Such innovation and learning will come only from people who are in touch with the voice of the customer and the voice of the process. It can not come from people who act only on instructions from top managers who are immersed in a fog of information about financial results.

Business must be run at a profit…, else it will die. But when any one attempts to run a business solely for profit and thinks not at all of the service to the community, then also the business must die, for it no longer has a reason for existence.

What I believe has happened in American businesses since the 1950s is that managers and operating personnel at all levels have lost sight of people, customers, and processes as top management has turned everyone's attention to accounting results.

The objective of most corporate leaders is to use people to make a great company. My objective is to use the company to make great people. —Ralph C. Stayer