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Mark Reich

Mark Reich

Senior Coach and Chief Engineer, Strategy at Lean Enterprise Institute; former Toyota executive with 23 years at Toyota including hoshin kanri strategy leadership in Japan and North America.

Jul 28, 2026

3:57
Mm-hmm.
3:57
And I think that...
3:58
I mean, and I worked for some tough bosses in Toyota, but I can't say I ever worked for a boss who didn't care about, like, my development, but also just, like, me as a person and wellbeing.
4:08
And I think, you know, that what you just referred to a little bit, Art, but I was also in a, this company I was at this week.
4:16
They did-- They went out.
4:17
They observed for a day.
4:19
These were pretty top, almost the entire executive team.

7 MINS LATER

11:11
Right.
3:44
Other people need to kind of come to that awareness, have the fish scales removed from their eyes in different ways.
3:50
You know, this sounds so basic, but I think it has to...
3:55
A lot to do with how much you care about people.
3:57
And I think that, I mean, and I work for some tough bosses in Toyota, but I can't say I ever worked for a boss that didn't care about like my development, but also just like me as a person and wellbeing.
4:08
And I think, you know, that what you just referred to a little bit, Art, but...
4:12
I was also in this company I was at this week.
4:16
They went out, they observed for a day.

19 MINS LATER

23:11
yeah like like quarterly
10:43
Doesn't mean I'm trying to go slow, but I don't wanna learn faster, right? [chuckles] I don't know if I'm, might be like crazy here, Mark, but I mean, there literally is the speed at which you can learn depends upon the cycle and how the Hoshin and the objectives and the cadence are set up, right?
10:57
Yeah, I was just in the, actually in the Hoshin class.
11:00
So this, this question came up of like, what if the company goes through a cycle and a half? And the question was like, how long does it take before you kinda like get it right? In Toyota, looked at it, look at everything like is a process.
11:12
And I think often the strategy's not looked at that way.
11:14
But it is a process, whether it's the development of the strategy, the execution of it.
11:18
And can any process in any industry walk out and get it perfect the first time? No.
11:25
So you're gonna learn things through, you know, if, if your Hoshin cycle is annual, you're gonna learn over the course of that year what your capabilities are to plan, to execute.

19 MINS LATER

30:45
I think there's a thinking in Toyota that

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