Leadership lessons from Toyota's recall crisis

Came across this interesting article in Fortune on Toyota. *

Virtually every one was critical about the re-call fiasco at Toyota.

• The customers ( present, past & future?) were upset for failing to live up to their (our) perception about Toyota quality !
• People representative, government agencies and relative departments, were quick to pounce on the copmany 
• Media was quick to jump, to give maximum coverage, may be in their pursuit of TRP, rather than customer safety ( environmental safety is beyond most of media, anyways!)
• Experts were quick to point out the whole episode as a 'PR fiasco'. They meant, if Toyota had handled PR well, just as most mega corps may do, it would have been less damaging !!
• Even nature seemed to be furious, unleashing disasters at their facilities in Japan & Thailand !

Perhaps all forgot the fact, for every Toyota recall crisis, 100 go unreported - we can blame it on an indifferent consumer, irresponsible govt machinery & media... and, a bit of PR effort by the erring organisations !

Now, at the end of the recall crisis, Toyota can breathe easily. We are talking about a 800k cars officially involved in recall ! Mind-blowing numbers, surely.

Thrust into the presidency in 2009, he would be preferred a less dramatic period to settle down. But, he had to face a series of challenges, natural & man-made ( are all not man-made, at a holistic level ?)

Toyota is on a come-back trail. Lot of credit goes to the leadership.
They will (have to ) focus more on quality, will launch many news models/variants (over 20 planned in 2012), will energise not only their Lexus brand, but also the manpower....
The youthful leader now appears less in suits, but more in the garb of a racer !!
Of course, media is only keen to oblige !!

Interesting times ahead for the automobile enthusiast !


* Check out the link
http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/09/toyota-akio-toyoda-comeback/?section=magazines_fortune