Coaching and Reflection
The Spirit of Follow-Up
The deeper you go into Toyota’s history, the more you realize that its system did not appear through design committees or consultants.
It evolved because of the behavior of its leaders—people like Taiichi Ohno and Tetsuo “Angel” Ohtsuki—who practiced follow-up as a daily discipline.
Ohno’s presence on the floor was legendary.
He didn’t just check results; he verified thinking.
He expected every manager to know the facts and to have personally confirmed them.
That expectation created the habit of leadership attention at the right time and place.
Ohtsuki embodied the same principle at the foreman level.
He followed up on everything, noted every commitment, and verified every improvement until it was part of daily work.
Their consistency built the foundation for Toyota’s change-point and standardization systems.
The system existed because of the way they led—not the other way around.
When coaching this phase, it’s important to remember that most organizations are still developing the same capability Toyota built over decades.
They don’t yet have the technical depth, the behavioral habits, or the management infrastructure in place.
That’s not failure; it’s the starting point for coaching.
The Coach’s Purpose
A coach’s role in Step 7 is to help a company assess where it stands across three axes:
- Technology and Technical Discipline – the rigor of its standards and visibility of change points.
- Behavior and Leadership Discipline – how leaders, engineers, and operators confirm and sustain improvement.
- Management System Discipline – how daily routines, boards, and reviews reinforce the follow-up cycle.
Good coaching doesn’t demand Toyota-level systems overnight.
It encourages the next step up the ladder of capability.
In an early-stage company, a “push” system like structured Gemba Walks might be necessary.
Over time, the goal is to evolve toward a “pull” system—where leadership attention is drawn naturally to real change points and abnormalities.
Coaching Questions
1. Technology / Technical Discipline
- Are changes visible and verifiable on the machine or process itself?
- Are change points documented, tracked, and monitored for stability?
- Is there a consistent method for deciding what requires documentation, retraining, or spare-parts adjustment?
- Does each countermeasure leave a physical trace that enforces or reveals the new standard?
2. Behavior / Leadership Discipline
- Do leaders personally confirm changes on-site, or rely on secondhand reports?
- Are supervisors and engineers demonstrating “follow-up until stable” habits?
- Is go and see (genchi genbutsu) a daily behavior or a special event?
- Do operators understand why a change was made and how to detect abnormality?
3. Management System / Organizational Discipline
- Is there a defined system linking change points to daily management boards or reviews?
- Do Gemba visits and meetings focus on genuine change-point confirmation rather than routine checklists?
- Are issues escalated and closed systematically, with accountability and learning captured?
- Is the follow-up process itself standardized, visible, and periodically evaluated?
Reflection for Coaches
Coaching Step 7 requires realism and respect.
Toyota’s maturity was not imported; it was cultivated through daily habits that connected technology, behavior, and management.
The goal is not to copy Toyota’s tools but to develop the same logic and discipline at the current level of capability.
A good coach meets organizations where they are, not where they “should” be.
The question is always:
“Given your current system, how can you follow up better, faster, and more visibly tomorrow?”
The essence of this step—and of good coaching—is to teach the spirit of confirmation:
seeing with your own eyes, verifying with facts, and sustaining with respect.
Follow-up is the ultimate act of respect — it says both the problem and the people matter enough to check.