We are pleased to host a return visit by Mike Rother, who will present a program based on his latest research and new managemetn book, "Toyota Kata".  

Drawing on six years of research about management and leadership at Toyota, Mike will provide a deeper look at two particular behavior routines or kata (meaning a pattern or form, translated literally from the Japanese as 'way of doing things"): the Improvement kata and the Coaching kata.  These kata are practiced every day at Toyota and are a big part of what has propelled Toyota as an adaptive and continuously improving company over the last six decades.   

Date:  Wednesday, March 24th

Time:  9:00 - 4:00 pm

Book signing:  8:30 - 9:00 and during lunch

Location:  Capital One Town Center

               15000 Capital One Drive

               Richmond, VA  23238

Seminar preparation:  All participants are encouraged to read Toyota Kata before attending the course.

Fee:  VBEC Members - $75.00 per person

        Non-Members - $175.00 per person

(Includes breaks and lunch)

Registration:

Members Only registration Feb. 10 - 24.  Contact Julie Johnson at DirectorVBEC@aol.com for the registration link.

NOTE: Capital One employees should go to Capital One University to register.

March 1 - Registration will be open to the public and information on how to register and pay will be posted.

Seminar Overview:

This seminar describes a way of bringing an organization to the top and keeping it there by influencing how everyone in it thinks, acts and reacts.

How can we lead our companies so they will survive and thrive in the long term?  Since the future lies beyond what we can see, the solutions that we employ today may not continue to be effective.  So it is not the solutions themselves - whether lean techniques, today's profitable product, or any other - that provide sustained competitive advantage, but rather the ability to understand conditions and create fitting, smart solutions.  Developing this capability in the organization is a key factor for any company's success, and a core responsibility of its leadership and management.

Drawing on six years of research about management and leadership at Toyota, this seminar will provide a research and experience-based look at two particular behavior routines, or kata (meaning pattern or form, translated literally from the japanese as "way of doing things"):

The Improvement Kata - a repeating routine of establishing challenging target conditions, working step-by-step through obstacles, and always learning from the problems we encounter

The Coaching Kata - a pattern of teaching the improvement kata to employees at every level to ensure that it motivates their ways of thinking and acting.

This research goes beyond Toyota and reaches a level where we are talking more about human behavior in organizations than Toyota practices or manufacturing per se.  The described behavior routines are universal and applicable in many different organziations, old or new, manufacturing or otherwise, and they provide a new and more effective model for how to manage organizations in the 21st century.

This seminar is for any organization that is searching for a better way to lead, manage and develop people, which produces continuous improvement, adaption, survival and superior results.

Note: To learn what Mike has to say about Toyota's current issues, go to http://theleanedge.org/?p=414.

Mike Rother is and engineer, a researcher, teacher, consultant, and speaker on the subjects of management, leadership, improvement, adaptiveness and change in organizations.  His work has brought him to numerous companies and hundreds of factories around the world, where he collaborates with people to test ideas and share lessons learned. 

Mike is the author of Toyota Kata (McGraw Hill), and co-author of Learning to See, Training to See and Creating Continuos Flow (all three at the Lean Enterprise Institute).  Mike's affilitations have included the Industrial Technology Instititute (Ann Arbor), the University of Michigan College of Engineering, the Fraunhofer Institute for Mnaufacturing Engineering and Automation (Stuttgart) and the Technical University Dortmund.

To learn more about Mike, visit his home-page at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother.