How Toyota Kata in your Obeya is a core process for the learning organization

How Toyota Kata in your Obeya is a core process for the learning organization

Challenges that organizations face today, require agility, resilience and full utilization of everybody’s competencies in the organization. It is no surprise that the concept of the learning organization, has been getting renewed interest. It makes the importance of (co-)learning
processes explicit again.

Fortunately, many organizations that have implemented Obeya, know that their Obeya meetings are meant to have the character of a management learning conversation. However, most leadership and management teams need to learn how to have and keep having such conversations. You are not yet having true learning conversations if, in your Obeya meetings, making excuses for failing to take effective action prevail; if assumptions about cause and effect are taken to be true without any evidence; or if you face the same problems returning time after time.

Have you realised that how you, as a leadership team, conduct your Obeya meetings, sets the tone for learning or non-learning at all levels? How employees will not do what you say, but what you do?

Toyota Kata is a pattern of thinking and acting; a routine that is an evidence-based way of conducting the learning conversation that helps solve problems and realize big challenges. There is the Improvement Kata for improvers, and the Coaching Kata for those who coach them.

Firstly, applying Kata leads to well-founded, lasting results. Maybe not as fast as you are used to, as the “problem – solution” impulse many of us have is transformed into a “problem – learning – solution” sequence, through many small steps of assumption questioning,
experimenting and learning. Applying Kata and nurturing its “go slow to go fast” attitude leads to meaningful, sustainable results.

An even more important second effect is: through learning dialogues based on Kata, you implicitly convey to everyone that you are building a learning climate, plus you show what behaviour comes with it. You may be struggling to do so (which shows even more how learning is aimed at), but you do set an example for employees for the desired behaviour towards reaching major challenges, important KPI’s or OKR’s, and solving problems. The importance of making a learning process explicit and learnable should not be mistaken.

Box and Figure: The Kata Improvement and Coaching patterns

Kata seems simple. But the concepts that seem most simple, are the most difficult to perform. They require serious effort to practice and make them routine behaviour. They require a coach to become really good at.

Kata requires what Mike Rother calls “scientific thinking”: to recognize and question assumptions rather than rely on them; to purposefully seek the boundary between what you know and what you don’t know yet; to take small steps through experiments that help you learn – to name just a few. And for coaches: to ask questions rather than contribute to answers; to ensure that your coachee takes and keeps ownership for solving problems; to analyze the improver’s reasoning and ask adequate coaching questions from the Coaching Kata that help them learn and apply the Improvement Kata.

A logical entry point for starting to include learning conversations using Kata in combination with your Obeya, is to start Kata Coaching for solving problems that are on the Improvement Board of your Obeya. Extensive experience in the global community of Kata practitioners has shown that Kata Coaches should first of all be experienced Kata Improvers. If you do not have an experienced Kata Coach in your organization, get one from outside, or start with a Kata Coaching Learning Group after having done a good Kata training. Then aim at a snowball effect to spread Kata thinking and acting. To make sure Kata Coaches learn as well, introduce a Second Kata Coach to help develop them develop their Kata Coaching skills.

You will notice that after a while, the pattern of thinking and doing becomes routinized and internalized, and participants in Obeya meetings will apply it to different parts of the Obeya and beyond. They will ask “how do you know this?”, or “what is a small step we can take to test this assumption?” A good Obeya Host, who knows Kata, is very helpful at this stage.

The combination of Obeya and Kata thus is a golden one. Toyota Kata helps learning processes grow at the individual, team (including management team) and organizational levels. A very effective way to develop your organization toward the agility, resilience and full utilization of all knowledge and skills available, required to thrive in today’s complex world full of uncertainty.

Start Practicing Toyota Kata in Your Obeya

Download the Kata Coaching Card – and bring structured learning into your meetings.

Use this simple yet powerful tool to transform your team sessions or problem-solving meetings. Start by identifying a challenge you want to tackle, then use the 5 Kata questions to guide your conversation toward insight and action.

• Follow each step in sequence
• Keep it brief, visual, and actionable
• Reflect on what you expected vs what actually happened
• Repeat regularly to build a continuous improvement habit