Last week, the New York Times had a great article entitled: "The ‘Toyota Way’ Is Translated for a New Generation of Foreign Managers."  The article is about the Toyota Institute which is:

"charged with preparing executives to enter the leadership class at Toyota by inculcating in them some of the most prized management secrets in corporate Japan. The institute sends off its executives to offices around the world as missionaries of sorts for the Toyota Way."

Actually it's not about "prized management secrets" at all.  Toyota has very few management secrets. Toyota shares its management secrets competitors; it often invites them in to discuss manufacturing methods.  It's operated a plant jointly with GM for over 20 years. How many secrets do you think you can keep in that environment?

Everybody knows that the company views improving the process of making cars as every bit as important as improving the cars themselves.  Everybody knows that Toyota has lots of sayings that incorporate key beliefs. Some of them make sense, others are puzzling, at least to North American ears.

And, everybody knows that Toyota has a culture that values the long view and continuous improvement. That culture grew out of the company's roots in rural Japan. It's been developed slowly, like Toyota's manufacturing methods, over decades.

The training center isn't about management secrets, it's about corporate culture.  Buried in the middle of the article is this telling quote.

"'Before, when everyone was Japanese, we didn’t have to make these things explicit,' Mr. Konishi said.'Now we have to set the Toyota Way down on paper and teach it.'"

Toyota isn't the only company that understands this.  Consider GE and the legendary Crotonville facility. 

GE understands that it's important to teach state of the art content to GE managers.  But Crotonville does two other things that the Toyota Institute will also do.

It helps inoculate GE managers with the core values of the GE culture.  That helps assure that whether a manager goes back to medical systems, or jet engines, or NBC, the values that guide management will be the same.

GE and Toyota also understand that training is a good place to bring together lots of managers who otherwise wouldn't meet each other.  They develop relationships that allow one manager to reach out to another in a different part of the company, or to select a performance partner that he or she would not have known except that they met at a training program.

Toyota, and GE and every great company that understands the importance of training their people knows that training does three important things.  Training improves important skills.  Training inculcates culture and values.  And, training builds relationships.

Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

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