September 11, 2025 • 32 mins
What if the real secret to customer loyalty and transformation isn’t just about great ideas, but about how you build consensus within your organization—before you make a single move?
Too often, even the smartest strategies can get derailed by resistance, misalignment, or simple miscommunication inside a company. That’s why I was eager to dig into the Japanese concept of "Nemawashi," a systematic approach to consensus-building that’s been central to Toyota’s legendary pursuit of customer delight and continuous improvement. Imagine cutting through internal silos and getting people not just to "buy in," but to truly commit—streamlining innovation from inside out. The impact? Smarter, faster, and more sustainable change that sticks.
If you care about transforming customer experience and sparking lasting organizational change, you don’t want to miss this episode with Dr. Graham Hill. He brings not only a global perspective but also hands-on experience as the former head of CRM for Toyota Financial Services—where these very principles drove jaw-dropping results. Dr. Hill’s blend of academic rigor, practical insight, and international expertise makes this a must-listen for anyone looking to break down barriers and drive real, measurable progress.
Here are three standout questions Graham answers on the show:
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What is Nemawashi, and how does it fundamentally change the way organizations drive internal consensus and transformation?
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Why is commitment more important than simple executive buy-in when trying to make organizational change succeed?
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How can the A3 model and concepts like Gemba and Kaizen help teams collaborate more effectively and boost campaign results?
Don’t miss this fascinating exploration—listen and subscribe to the Delighted Customers podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or find us on all your favorite podcast platforms.
Meet Dr. Graham Hill
Dr. Graham Hill is a recognized global authority on customer experience, loyalty, and organizational transformation. With an extensive background spanning over thirty-five years, Graham has worked with top brands such as British Airways, Ford Motor Company, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and notably spent over five years with Toyota Financial Services in Germany as Head of CRM. There, he learned firsthand the power of Japanese business principles like Nemawashi, the A3 model, and Kaizen—applying them to drive breakthrough improvements, including a leap from a 5–10% to a 35% response rate in customer campaigns.
He’s also held senior roles at firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG Consulting, bringing both rigorous academic and practical expertise to the table. While Graham humbly resists the title of "Japanese culture expert," his immersion in Toyota’s approach has given him a unique perspective on the art and science of organizational change. Today, he’s active on LinkedIn—passionate about sharing what he’s learned and helping others cultivate more collaborative, customer-centric organizations.
Connect with Graham Hill on LinkedIn: Graham Hill
Show Note References
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Toyota’s Secret Weapon: The A3 Report by John Shook (MIT Sloan Management Review): Read Article
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Culture’s Consequences by Geert Hofstede: Learn more
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Steve Blank’s quote: “There are no facts inside the building.” Steve Blank
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Servqual/ RATER Model: Overview
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40 Years, 20 Million Ideas: Toyota’s Suggestion System: Book Info
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Tom Fishburne, Marketoonist: Marketoonist Cartoons
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Connect with Dr. Graham Hill: LinkedIn
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Well, today on the Delighted Customers podcast, I am
so excited. We are going almost halfway around the globe
to Germany where I am so excited to welcome
my guest, Dr. Graham Hill to the show. Dr. Hill,
welcome to the show. Good day. Many things I want to tell you, a little
bit of background as to why I invited Dr.
(00:22):
G. On the show he and I started connecting. I
don't know how we first started, but on through LinkedIn and commentaries
on things related to customer experience, related to
customer loyalty. Started to find him more and more interesting
as no matter what we wrote about, he would quickly come up with
three or four citations
(00:44):
from papers and documents and books, from
graphs, charts. And I knew this guy was super smart, wicked
smart as they say in Boston. And then we got into this conversation
about internally, how do we corporate create change
within the organization to ultimately end up with more loyal
customers. So we talk about developing relationships with stakeholders and how
(01:06):
important it was to build those that network inside the
organization and work with people. And he mentioned this
concept of Nimawashi. And so I'm going to
introduce him by telling you that he has true
global background where he worked with Price House,
PricewaterhouseCoopers and then Pricewaterhouse KPMG
(01:28):
Consulting and worked with, with some of the best and most
recognized brands across the globe. We were just talking about
British Airways, but also Toyota. And he worked, spent
quite a bit of time doing work with Toyota and was trained
and you know, we have a tremendous amount of respect for Toyota and
their ability to build unbelievable automobiles and electronics and so forth.
(01:50):
But Nimawashi was critical to that. So I'd love
for you to, if you could, we're going to talk a little bit about
how the Japanese approached how, how to build
organizations that ultimately do right by
the customer, delight customers, but do throw so through
Nimawashi, an A3 model that maybe we can gain
(02:13):
some insights from. So if you don't mind, share with us a little
bit about this concept and level set
for the audience who may not be familiar with it. Okay. You talked about a
couple of things, Nemuashi. One of those things which is if you like the art
of gaining consensus, and that's quite important in
Japanese companies as obviously as well as it is for Western companies as well, but
(02:34):
particularly Japanese goods because they obviously have a different culture than we have in the
West. He also mentioned A3. So an A3 is literally, as
the name suggests, an A3 sheet of paper. So in the west
we're used to 50 page presentations that of course nobody actually reads or
looks at because it's too many pages and takes an absolute fortune and
ages to write. In Toyota, where I learnt all of these tools and use them
(02:56):
every day in my work, you have one A3 sheet of paper, which
is a. It's not something you fill in per se, although you do fill it
in. It's a way of keeping a record of how you go about
gaining consensus. Back to Nemashi again. And there are a variety of other things we'll
talk about, including this concept of Gemba where things are
taking place and so forth. So if I have a problem to solve,
(03:18):
I spot something's going wrong with a
Toyota. I was head of CRM for Toyota Financial Services, so I
ran campaigns. My major concern was, was repurchase
management. So getting people who bought a Toyota in the past to buy another new
Toyota, to insure it with Toyota Financial Services and to
finance it with Toyota Financial Services, that's worth big money in automotive.
(03:40):
So that was my. So I'd be running a campaign if I spotted opportunity to
improve it or I wanted to run an A B test. I would set up
an A3 to capture all of the things I needed to go through in a
step by step process to be able to understand the problem and identify
my targets and what have you. But I'd need to gain consensus
throughout that process, not at the end, like when we have in the West. I've
(04:01):
got a great idea, do you like it? But actually all the way through in
terms of the steps in the A3 process. So I would use
the A3 to set out how I'd solve problems or identify opportunities,
of course. And I'd use Nemiwashi as a process to gain
consensus with all the people who need to be involved. And that would often
involve what people talk about in lean circles of going to the Gemba, so going
(04:22):
to where things are actually carried out, which in my case
means I spent a lot of time talking to printers, a lot of time talking
to dealers at dealerships, a lot of time talking to customers, a lot of time
talking to the field force, because they're all the people who have a role to
play in making sure an improvement is successful
and need to be involved in the process throughout. Just at the end or at
(04:43):
the beginning where you're suggesting something new. So it's a way of, if you like
the Japanese art of getting consensus and getting things done without writing 50
page presentations that nobody reads. And this is a really important
thing to them, right? This idea of getting consensus, it goes even
beyond just a sort of a business, a logistical business
process. Right. It speaks to who they are as a. As a people.
(05:04):
Yes, we are different in many ways. Culturally. If you look at people like Gert
Hofstadter's book Culture's Consequences, you can see different. Different
characteristics that different nationalities have, broadly speaking. But
in the companies I work with in the west, you know, big banks and telcos
and airlines and other car companies and what have you. People like to be involved
in things people need. If we want to get anything done, it's not
(05:26):
fundamentally different, it's just different in perspective and different
from a cultural perspective as well. And whereas in Japan, it's expected. I'm not an
expert in Japanese companies, by the way. I spent five or six years working with
Toyota in Germany. We had a lot of. I learned a huge amount, but I'm
not an expert in Japanese culture. But I do see things that they do differently
that are, in my view, superior to the ways we do things in the West.
(05:46):
And I always say I Learned more from 5 years at
Toyota than I did from 35 years working with some of the biggest
brand names in, in the west, all put together,
from American Airlines through Ford Motor Company
to Royal bank of Scotland, all of these put together. I learned more from traders
and all these other organizations put together in terms of how you run companies and
(06:09):
how you make change successful. And before we dig into what are
some of the steps in Imawashi, I want to echo or affirm what you
said about. I think it's superior too, and I think so. I think
it is, because, gosh, basic human nature is we
want to be understood, we want to be seen, we want to be heard, we
want to be respected. And if you try to say,
(06:31):
I think you're the smartest person in the room and you come across
that way, you're going to get some natural resistance. But if you
take the time to learn and include and collaborate with other
people and you're trying to make change, people underestimate how hard
changes in organizations. Then I think doing the things that the
Japanese have done, which is nimbawashi, which is
(06:54):
getting consensus as you describe, it may take a little
more time, maybe on the front end, but in the long
run, you're going to end up with a lot less headwinds. Would you
agree? I think that's true. And
the science in the art of Nemoashi, as part of the
A3 process, let's call it that means that by the time
(07:16):
you get to the end of the process, You've already got commitment. So
I don't want buy in because people can be bought out by other things that
come along. I want people to committed. I want people to understand
what my expectations of them are. If I'm creating a new marketing
campaign to drive people to drive customers to repurchase Toyotas,
I want the financial services group to be committed so that when or the call
(07:38):
center so that when the dealership calls in and say I've got a potential customer,
can you do a credibility check or
a. What's it in English, a
credit worthiness check and what have you that they're all waiting and prepared
and ready. I need to make sure that the dealers themselves are ready when I
provide them with a really good lead in terms of somebody who's likely to come
(08:00):
in this weekend and have a look at a vehicle. I need to make sure
the field forces are ready to support the dealers. I can't leave those things to
chance. Well, actually I can, but then as luck will have it, things won't
work out and I won't improve over time. And the other thing
thing people talk about Kaizen continuous improvement. The campaigns that I
ran at Toyota would start out with a reasonably good
(08:21):
response rate. Then I'd work at them every week and every month
to improve them through countless experiments. And the end of a year
they'd go from a 5 to 10% response rate. So bought a new
vehicle, got insured, got in and got financed by
Toyota to a 35% response rate.
Everybody I contacted bought a car, financed it through Toyota to ensure it through
(08:43):
Toyota worked in marketing for many, many decades now and I don't see many campaigns
and 35% response rate. Yeah, definitely a reflection of a
higher level of commitment. I just want to double click on what you said because
sometimes guests like you share these
gems and they come out so fast that people can miss them. So
I don't want people to miss that one, which is subtle but it's really
(09:06):
important. I think could write, you know, could write a book on. On this topic
alone is ex executive buy in versus
commitment. Yes. How important it is for
one share more with us. Can you think of maybe not
a specific example but an example of how that could play out
in a project where you're looking to make a change. Yes, I'm trying to put
(09:27):
it in the context of the work that it actually did where commitment was really
important. So we talked about the dealerships in the past.
So in automotive when marketing or sales
identifies the lead. So you go to the website and you go to the car
configurator, you configure your ideal car and that gets captured as
a lead by the manufacturer because they run the website, it gets passed on
(09:49):
to the dealership as a hot lead. In reality, the dealership who lives
in the real world rather than the world of, you know, marketing theory, knows
it's anything but a hot lead. So a hot lead for them is something that's
going to come in this week, next week at the latest. I already know what
the driving, I already know what they're like to be wanting to buy and I
don't know what sort of engine they're going to want and all that sort of
(10:09):
detail. And I also know that they can actually afford it.
A hot lead from a dealer is different from a hot
leader from a manufacturer. So that's how you can use it to get commitment from
people. You know, these are people with the people at the front end. Yeah. So
what a great example of going
from just the concept of buy in to commitment.
(10:31):
Commitment is a whole nother level and Nimbawashi can help us get there.
What was you say is the
reason that the C suite should care or pay attention to this?
I think there's a very simple reason, and that is that particularly in Japan, but
also in the west, the C suite needs to know what's going on
before they go to a meeting. So in Japan, if I go to a meeting
(10:54):
and introduce a new concept to the senior
people in the meeting, I'm in deep trouble. Could they expect me to have talked
to them individually beforehand to gauge their
perceptions and their interests and look for objections that I might need to overcome?
The. Mentally, it's no different in the West. So if I'm going to present something
quite important that I want them to fund eventually,
(11:15):
I want them to give up their time in the interim while I'm working out
how best to do it and how best to marshal all. But also I'm going
to need some in advance. I can't just leave it to the
end and say, here's a great idea I need to talk about when thinking about,
well, let's think about the problem and where we're going to get facts and figures
about the real problem that we have in hand and how we can set
targets. All that requires you to talk to the Swiss suit beforehand if
(11:38):
you want them to know what's going on, to be engaged
in it initially, then to be committed to seeing it through. Because all the
things, no matter how clever we think we are, all the things we invent or
decide upon may have challenges, things we haven't foreseen or couldn't possibly
foresee. Things from left field that get in the way or support you
sometimes. We had a big supporting thing in Germany where German government
(12:00):
decided halfway through the campaign that they wanted to support people to buy new
cars to get old second hand dirty cars off the road.
We had this great situation where we were saying buy a new car and we
think you're in the market and we've got this great thing from the government who's
going to give you money to swap your old car for your old banger for
a brand new car. So that you know that helped us in many ways. But
(12:20):
to be involved and to support you and to be committed, not bought in again
then they need to be informed and need to be engaged and you need to
be involved in the whole process. And that's why the Moishi, which is relatively
light, light touch most of the time is a really powerful
tool, but it's a nice name. We should be doing this in the west anyway,
shouldn't we? This is just common sense surely. I just also want to
(12:42):
double tap on what you said about not surprising the C suite
are not trying to drop in like Superman
into save the day with some great theory or idea
but. But giving them some advance notice, keeping them informed may
seem counterintuitive. It may seem like extra work. I don't know if this
goes into some of the myths around Imawashi or the collaborative process,
(13:04):
but would you agree with that and what other myths might there be around this?
So unless you've with Japanese companies, Nemoashi is relatively
unheard of. Everybody's heard of Kaizen or Lean and what have you because they're
quite been in the public domain and been discussed and
used quite widely. But Nemiwashi is something you only really practice if you work
with Japanese companies. So if your permission I'm going to broaden this out a little
(13:26):
bit to the myths around change and how we facilitate
change. The first myth that I recognize is that hence my use of the word
facilitate. Change is not something you can manage. Change is
an emergent phenomenon. So in other words, change
occurs through the interactions of lots of other people in your organization
or other organizations as are talking to each other that decides something's going to be
(13:48):
different. We talk about people resisting change, but people change all the time.
What I find in my work over many years, running large
programs of work is that people don't resist change, they resist
being changed. By others, you do something different rather than getting engaged
in deciding how you're going to change yourself. But also we have
this again, this western thing where we have we set
(14:10):
north stars where we want to get to this nirvana we're never going to
reach, of course, but that's the nirvana we're going to aim for. We have really
complicated plans about how we're going to get there. But if anything
changes, then the plan starts to fall apart. And as I think
it was von Clausewitz said a long time ago, no plan survives first
contact with the enemy plans. And I think Eisenhower said during the Second
(14:32):
World War that plans are nothing, planning is
everything. So lots of great gems here, folks. If you're
listening, we'll have links to these in the show notes.
But I want to dig into
Nimawashi if you would share a bit about the
steps, maybe walk us through an illustration in the real world
(14:55):
of what it might look like. So in order, Nimawashi applies in the
context of how you build consensus around an A3. So we talked about an A3
sheet. An A3 has a series of steps and the steps are you define the
problem. You'd be amazed how many times I go and talk to people in the
organizations. They're not actually clear what the problem is. You go talk to marketing,
sales and service and they think it's all radically different. So the first step is
(15:16):
actually agreeing what the problem is. If we can really get going, then the next
step is then you. You identify what you know about the problem. So you have
to go to the Gemba. Go where? To go to see where things are really
going. That means getting out of your office. They
professor called Steve Blank and works at Barclay, I think in the USA
in the Bay Area. He's been a serial entrepreneur and he says there are no
(15:36):
facts inside the building. So get outside the building and go to the
Gemma. Go see where things are happening and learn by observing what's going on. What
Toyota presses Kotori to cause Genji Genbutsu Go see for yourself
rather than Lion Khan reports. So you go and see what's going on. You
gather facts and figures. Then you set your stretch targets, your targets you want to
achieve. Basically now you have an understanding. Then you go and do root cause analysis
(15:59):
after that trying to work out what the problems are. Then you will define your
interventions, then you'll plan those interventions and then you'll plan,
follow up. Because obviously we need to be able to monitor, measure, measure, monitor,
manage this working precise, probably all be done at the
same time. So let's take, if you think about this step by step, the
problem. I have a problem with the marketing campaign. I want to improve increase my
(16:20):
repurchase rate for new vehicle sales with existing customers.
So I need to go and talk to the dealerships because they're the ones who
actually sell cars. And you go and talk to marketing inside Ford,
sorry, inside Toyota. I need to go talk to financial services because
they're the one who going to be saying yes you can buy a car, no
you can't buy a car for whatever reason. And you go talk to the field
force. I might need to go and talk to the printer about some things I
(16:42):
might be wanting to do some vouchers I want to offer as part of the
deal. So go and talk to different people about the problem and I capture that
detail the consensus as part of the A3 sheet, a
little section at the top. There's a great article by the way by John Schott
called Toyota's Secret Weapon or Toyota's Secret the A theory report.
An MIT slurred management review article from 1987. It's got a
(17:04):
good framework to use, one that I tend to use. So we've now
agreed by talking around, by doing some Nemo ashi what the problem is. Then I
need to go and find out some facts and figures about the problem. So how
many people are buying cars that bought one previously? What are they buying? What did
they buy previously, how much are they paying, which dealership did they buy from, where
they cluster all those sorts of things, what stops them buying? So you need to
(17:25):
go and talk to the people who know what's going on again. So I'll go
to the dealership again to the field force and go to financial services. Probably won't
go to marketing quite so easily because they're not so relevant. I'll go and then
I'll define the next stage which is what I know about the problem. So
more Nemoashi, more talking to people, more showing and comparing
things. It's a one on one thing rather than a meeting. We're not going to
(17:45):
have a meeting. I'm going to go and talk to them. I'm going to get
out of my office and go to the dealerships and talk to dealer principals and
sales managers and the dealers to find out what's really going on. So now we
know what the problem is. We've agreed that we know what the we gathered a
load of facts and figures describing the problem. Now I can set my targets
that we want to achieve based on mindset of the problem.
(18:05):
And again, more in my show with different people. I'm going to talk to finance,
I'm going to talk to sales, I'm going to talk to the call center, I'm
going to talk to dealers because obviously they want to sell vehicles as well. I'm
going to talk to other people that have anything to do with this and we're
going to set my targets. If my targets are low, 1% improvement,
5% improvement, I can probably achieve them without doing a great deal different.
If they're 10% or 20% or 30% different,
(18:28):
then doing more of the same won't work. So I need to be more creative
about what I do in a minute. I made a mistake early on in my
time as head of CRM at Twitter and I appeared in the meeting and I
did some calculations and I said to my Japanese colleagues, I
think we could probably achieve 30% if I work really, really hard. And like a
fool, next time, the minute skim around, my target had been set to 30%.
(18:51):
He dared to support Japanese colleagues. So now I had a target I had to
achieve. There's no maybe now, I had to achieve it. So I had to
pull it all the stops. And then it became even more important. So we set
our targets we want to achieve. Then the next step is we're introducing root cause
analysis to understand, not I understand the facts and figures, but I need to understand
why things are occurring, why, what people buy and why do they buy, why do
(19:11):
people not buy, what do they buy, why do they not buy, etc. So I
can go and figure, how do I calculate the right offer to make for them
an individual finance offer who can't have one because
the maths don't work out at the end of the day. So, and again I'm
talking to finance again, I'm talking to some of the people in sales again and
other parts of the organization around the next challenge I'd have, which is,
(19:32):
you know, how do we understand the root cause of the problem that might occur
and the opportunity I want to achieve. Now I've got to 30% target, you know,
staring over me too, having done that, then we go around the same process again,
looking at interventions. What am I going to do? What am I going to provide
to hit my 30% so I know what the problem is, I
know I've got loads of facts and figures. I know the root cause of the
(19:52):
problem, why they do and don't buy. I know my target and I also know
Now I can use that to identify what I'm going to do. I
described earlier on we used a well
proven campaign borrowed from a deal in
Bolton in Lancashire, North England and adapted that
as our test bed as our starting point. Then we go on the
(20:13):
process. We're now agreed what we're going to do. I've gone to talk to the
printer, can they print the vouchers they need to do? We've ran a competition, can
we do the is legal, happy with the competition we want to run, etc.
Can I get my print campaign, my print schedule all
organized? Are the dealers expecting, are the field force engaged and
informed? Are they able to force you get the point? Then
(20:35):
I go through the planning process and again one put from other people to
Nemoashi and then I identify the follow up that we're going to be doing because
with Toyota we do Kaizen. So having launched the campaign,
having been to that first round of Nemoashi then I go create an improvement
a three where I'm trying new things out afterwards. So we've run the campaign, we've
got a 5 to 10% response rate which is already pretty good but not good
(20:57):
enough because my topic is now 30% because I was an idiot in
a meeting and I set myself a target I had to achieve Though every time
we ran the campaign we changed some things. We talked to the same
person, to the dealer principals about some dealers were very successful at
selling cars that they individualized offers to customers, some were not. We
wanted to talk to the ones at and said what did you do? And also
(21:18):
the ones that weren't successful and said what did you do? Or what didn't you
do? We thought we changed the spreadsheets we produce on a weekly basis
to, to the dealers to say okay, here are your target customers
and we added more information that we could do to help them say okay, so
they know what you, what you're driving, what your monthly rate is, what your balloon
is, what your down payment was, what we're going to be offering you all sorts
of information so they're ready to go and talk to them and proactively rather
(21:41):
than hope that they're going to come in at the weekend because we've got a
great offer for you, key for key. It's a wonderful offer and if you, if
you take part there's a competition to win free financing in terms of no other
than the cost, no additional financing fees by taking part in a prize tour.
So there's all those things going on at the same time Week by week, month
by month. At the end of a year, we'd gone from a 5 to 10%
(22:01):
response rate. So bought a new vehicle, financed it, insured it to
a 35% response rate by loosely applying kaizen
venue a 3 improvement. A 3 using more nemo ashi
because now I want to get people to change their behavior. As I said at
the start, the dealers, when they'd get a lead from manufacturer would say this is
going to be rubbish. I'm not going to bother. We had great hot
(22:23):
leads for individuals who would highly like to buy a car with a
great offer, an individualized finance offer for them. So, you know, we
had a great story to tell, but we needed to persuade the dealers to
do something different rather than just ignoring it. So we had to engage the field
sales forces for financial services and for sales, new vehicle
sales. They go and support the dealers say, have you got your sheet? They
(22:45):
got the same sheets as well. You've got your sheet. Let's talk about these individual
customers and let's work out. Let's start do a few calls together. And we also
talked to customers about what attracted them and made them borrowing, which is all that
fed into continuous improvement Kaizen to achieve those
targets that if I'd worked for another car company, wouldn't have been possible. Really
fascinating walkthrough it. One of the things I like is sort of built into
(23:07):
the process is you're taking a guide versus a
hero approach by insisting on
collaboration and insisting on ensuring that,
number one, you're asking the right questions. But people
don't feel like you're coming in with a solution.
We did provide solutions at the end, but the solutions weren't invented by me. The
(23:29):
original idea came from another dealer who was very successful with this campaign. If you
work for manufacturer, an auto manufacturer, they think the idea of a great campaign is
a glossy brochure in an E4 format
full of very expensive photographs of always young people.
You know, because people buy cars. Not if you go talk to a dealer.
A dealer's idea of a perfect campaign is one sheet of a three paper
(23:51):
saying, Dear Mr. Smith, please come in on a Saturday. Here's what you're buying,
here's what you pay, here's what you're driving, here's what you're paying. Come on Saturday,
you can have a new car. Same vehicle again, same monthly payment. We'll see you
on Saturday. That's the dealer's idea of a great campaign, not a Dottie brochure.
So my job is to be A bridge between the manufacturer, Toyota and their
dealerships. And I engage also with the people to be support me in
(24:12):
the process. But I was just merely a facilitator using
the framework that Toyota provided to me on a plate.
Yeah, I love both the collaborative aspect of it,
but also the fact that it gets on an A3, you know, it can fit
on an A3. A single sheet of paper makes it simple. So
I did have other spreadsheets with calculations of pricing and what have you.
(24:35):
And I had a process map that I drew up separately as well to show
that I have the process of creating a campaign so I could teach others how
to do it. After I left, I was only interim head of CRM and I
found my replacement and left that they needed what was going on. So we had
a process model for them to work through as well. More Toyota thinking. The other
thing is that there's this idea of continuous improvement. So I've worked
for many, you know, quite some decades now in marketing, and what I typically see
(24:57):
is marketers will run a campaign, then they'll move on to the next campaign. There
won't be this process of pulling it apart, looking to ways to improve
it. I mean, mine was driven by eight working for Toyota, but I had a
30% target. So I have to keep improving it every little, every
week or every month, otherwise, you know, I'm toast. But that Kaizen
process, when you win it with Toyota, that's everybody. It's part of everybody's day job.
(25:19):
I mean, I showed this book, I hope you can see this. It's got an
old book. 40 years, 30 million. 20 million ideas. 40 years, 20
million ideas. These are often small ideas
identified by people on the ground doing the day job at the
Gemba, where things happen that they implement within
a month at very low cost and doesn't go through this big central
(25:42):
committee of, you know, collecting suggestions that then get ignored. As a
great markatoonist, you know, Tom Fishbourne, the marketoonist, has a great campaign,
has a great set of cartoons, and there's one about idea boxes. And
the idea is in. The other side is a shredder, shredding the ideas
into the idea. So at Toyota, it's everybody's
day job to identify opportunities to improve things, then to use the
(26:04):
Kaizen process, use an A3 of its significance eyes
to go through that structure process to make sure it actually works and go through
it quickly. So you said something important earlier on. It sometimes does take
a little bit longer than coming up with an idea by yourself and writing it
into this wonderful 50 page presentation to present at the next management board meeting.
But it's much more quicker and much more likely to be successful
(26:25):
than those wonderful presentations because by the time I get to a meeting
with an A3, everybody knows what's involved, everybody knows what I expect
of them. Everybody's been involved. And I was on the back of the A3. I
always have a little box, a series of boxes for signatures for all the key
players. And when they wrote the signature in the box, I had permission from them
to proceed with the campaign. When they got that last signature, that was it. I
(26:47):
was ready to go. They'd committed time, resources, money, people,
energy to fulfilling what's on the A3. I was ready to
go. And everything at Toyota typically gets run through these A3 type sheets.
And many Japanese companies run in a similar in a similar way. I have used
it also in western companies. It's a bit of a struggle to use in some.
I used to do a major European airline for example, as part of a big
(27:09):
we taught it to them how to do this process as part of using Toyota
car to the Toyota's, you know, way of business agile. But it's not easy because
it's counterintuitive. You know, some heroes creates a wonderful presentation,
50 pages long, presented a board meeting. They create a business case
which is designed to get funding. Once the business case has been
funded, then it's abandoned and forgotten about because I've got the funding. That's what its
(27:31):
purpose was. Things are different. You
write your plan and you calculate what funding you need to make it
work. But remember that last part of the A3 is follow
up. And that follow up is about measuring
how successful you were and working out how to standardize the things that
work well and improve through plan, do check, act kaizen
(27:54):
the things that need improving. You know what I love about
the model is it's really embedding continuous
transformation into the culture of an organization. It's just the operating
model. This is what we do. We're asking you to help us continuously
co create the future.
(28:14):
Yeah, very well done. We have got to speaking of airlines, we
we need to land the plane. But before we
do, I have one last question I have for you which is what I ask
all my guests because of the name of the show is called the Delighted
Customers podcast. What delights you as a
customer? Yes. Okay. I think
(28:37):
I'm not atypical as a customer. If I'm going to answer the question, I think
I'm going To refer to yet another idea, the Servcore model
from the 1980s. It's been around for a long time,
been proven many, many times over and they identified what drives service
quality. And out of that and out of much research into many
different companies and I've used in my work at airlines, other companies as well, they
(28:59):
came up with a rater model. And the rater model says the things we look
for in service quality are reliability, assurance, having good staff,
tangible, so buildings, communications, uniforms, etc. Empathy.
I include compassion with empathy and
responsiveness in most companies, in most situations, with
most customers, the most important point by far is reliability.
(29:22):
Doing what you say on the tin. I'm in time out to the same
degree of quality so that I know exactly what I'm expecting. Because don't
forget service quality. In the old calculation, the
old equation, if you like, there's a difference between perceptions and expectations.
If I know what to expect and you deliver that, that's going to be high
quality buy, you know, absolutely might not be particularly sparkling, might be Ryanair
(29:44):
compared to Emirates, but if I know what I'm expecting, you
deliver it time and time again. That's quality and only the customer defines quality.
Deliver what you see on a tin, time in, time out the same way and
I'll be a happy customer because knowing exactly what to expect. Excellent. Well, I'm
always learning from you. I appreciate you and thank you so much
for joining us. All the way for Germany, from Germany. If people wanted to
(30:06):
get a hold of you and learn more or maybe even bring you on board
to help them solve some problems, what would be the best way for them to
connect with you? This way, by, by by far is to find me on
LinkedIn, Graham Hill and, and reach out to me there.
I'm quite active on LinkedIn and very and I, you know, a
lot of people helped me when I was early on in my career and I'm
(30:26):
happy to help others as a consequence, whether they want to work with me or
just want advice. Happy to help. Always happy to help. Excellent. Dr. Graham Hill, thank
you so much for being on the delighted customers podcast. My pleasure, Mark, thank you
indeed.
Well, today on the Delighted Customers podcast, I am
so excited. We are going almost halfway around the globe
to Germany where I am so excited to welcome
my guest, Dr. Graham Hill to the show. Dr. Hill,
welcome to the show. Good day. Many things I want to tell you, a little
bit of background as to why I invited Dr.
(00:22):
G. On the show he and I started connecting. I
don't know how we first started, but on through LinkedIn and commentaries
on things related to customer experience, related to
customer loyalty. Started to find him more and more interesting
as no matter what we wrote about, he would quickly come up with
three or four citations
(00:44):
from papers and documents and books, from
graphs, charts. And I knew this guy was super smart, wicked
smart as they say in Boston. And then we got into this conversation
about internally, how do we corporate create change
within the organization to ultimately end up with more loyal
customers. So we talk about developing relationships with stakeholders and how
(01:06):
important it was to build those that network inside the
organization and work with people. And he mentioned this
concept of Nimawashi. And so I'm going to
introduce him by telling you that he has true
global background where he worked with Price House,
PricewaterhouseCoopers and then Pricewaterhouse KPMG
(01:28):
Consulting and worked with, with some of the best and most
recognized brands across the globe. We were just talking about
British Airways, but also Toyota. And he worked, spent
quite a bit of time doing work with Toyota and was trained
and you know, we have a tremendous amount of respect for Toyota and
their ability to build unbelievable automobiles and electronics and so forth.
(01:50):
But Nimawashi was critical to that. So I'd love
for you to, if you could, we're going to talk a little bit about
how the Japanese approached how, how to build
organizations that ultimately do right by
the customer, delight customers, but do throw so through
Nimawashi, an A3 model that maybe we can gain
(02:13):
some insights from. So if you don't mind, share with us a little
bit about this concept and level set
for the audience who may not be familiar with it. Okay. You talked about a
couple of things, Nemuashi. One of those things which is if you like the art
of gaining consensus, and that's quite important in
Japanese companies as obviously as well as it is for Western companies as well, but
(02:34):
particularly Japanese goods because they obviously have a different culture than we have in the
West. He also mentioned A3. So an A3 is literally, as
the name suggests, an A3 sheet of paper. So in the west
we're used to 50 page presentations that of course nobody actually reads or
looks at because it's too many pages and takes an absolute fortune and
ages to write. In Toyota, where I learnt all of these tools and use them
(02:56):
every day in my work, you have one A3 sheet of paper, which
is a. It's not something you fill in per se, although you do fill it
in. It's a way of keeping a record of how you go about
gaining consensus. Back to Nemashi again. And there are a variety of other things we'll
talk about, including this concept of Gemba where things are
taking place and so forth. So if I have a problem to solve,
(03:18):
I spot something's going wrong with a
Toyota. I was head of CRM for Toyota Financial Services, so I
ran campaigns. My major concern was, was repurchase
management. So getting people who bought a Toyota in the past to buy another new
Toyota, to insure it with Toyota Financial Services and to
finance it with Toyota Financial Services, that's worth big money in automotive.
(03:40):
So that was my. So I'd be running a campaign if I spotted opportunity to
improve it or I wanted to run an A B test. I would set up
an A3 to capture all of the things I needed to go through in a
step by step process to be able to understand the problem and identify
my targets and what have you. But I'd need to gain consensus
throughout that process, not at the end, like when we have in the West. I've
(04:01):
got a great idea, do you like it? But actually all the way through in
terms of the steps in the A3 process. So I would use
the A3 to set out how I'd solve problems or identify opportunities,
of course. And I'd use Nemiwashi as a process to gain
consensus with all the people who need to be involved. And that would often
involve what people talk about in lean circles of going to the Gemba, so going
(04:22):
to where things are actually carried out, which in my case
means I spent a lot of time talking to printers, a lot of time talking
to dealers at dealerships, a lot of time talking to customers, a lot of time
talking to the field force, because they're all the people who have a role to
play in making sure an improvement is successful
and need to be involved in the process throughout. Just at the end or at
(04:43):
the beginning where you're suggesting something new. So it's a way of, if you like
the Japanese art of getting consensus and getting things done without writing 50
page presentations that nobody reads. And this is a really important
thing to them, right? This idea of getting consensus, it goes even
beyond just a sort of a business, a logistical business
process. Right. It speaks to who they are as a. As a people.
(05:04):
Yes, we are different in many ways. Culturally. If you look at people like Gert
Hofstadter's book Culture's Consequences, you can see different. Different
characteristics that different nationalities have, broadly speaking. But
in the companies I work with in the west, you know, big banks and telcos
and airlines and other car companies and what have you. People like to be involved
in things people need. If we want to get anything done, it's not
(05:26):
fundamentally different, it's just different in perspective and different
from a cultural perspective as well. And whereas in Japan, it's expected. I'm not an
expert in Japanese companies, by the way. I spent five or six years working with
Toyota in Germany. We had a lot of. I learned a huge amount, but I'm
not an expert in Japanese culture. But I do see things that they do differently
that are, in my view, superior to the ways we do things in the West.
(05:46):
And I always say I Learned more from 5 years at
Toyota than I did from 35 years working with some of the biggest
brand names in, in the west, all put together,
from American Airlines through Ford Motor Company
to Royal bank of Scotland, all of these put together. I learned more from traders
and all these other organizations put together in terms of how you run companies and
(06:09):
how you make change successful. And before we dig into what are
some of the steps in Imawashi, I want to echo or affirm what you
said about. I think it's superior too, and I think so. I think
it is, because, gosh, basic human nature is we
want to be understood, we want to be seen, we want to be heard, we
want to be respected. And if you try to say,
(06:31):
I think you're the smartest person in the room and you come across
that way, you're going to get some natural resistance. But if you
take the time to learn and include and collaborate with other
people and you're trying to make change, people underestimate how hard
changes in organizations. Then I think doing the things that the
Japanese have done, which is nimbawashi, which is
(06:54):
getting consensus as you describe, it may take a little
more time, maybe on the front end, but in the long
run, you're going to end up with a lot less headwinds. Would you
agree? I think that's true. And
the science in the art of Nemoashi, as part of the
A3 process, let's call it that means that by the time
(07:16):
you get to the end of the process, You've already got commitment. So
I don't want buy in because people can be bought out by other things that
come along. I want people to committed. I want people to understand
what my expectations of them are. If I'm creating a new marketing
campaign to drive people to drive customers to repurchase Toyotas,
I want the financial services group to be committed so that when or the call
(07:38):
center so that when the dealership calls in and say I've got a potential customer,
can you do a credibility check or
a. What's it in English, a
credit worthiness check and what have you that they're all waiting and prepared
and ready. I need to make sure that the dealers themselves are ready when I
provide them with a really good lead in terms of somebody who's likely to come
(08:00):
in this weekend and have a look at a vehicle. I need to make sure
the field forces are ready to support the dealers. I can't leave those things to
chance. Well, actually I can, but then as luck will have it, things won't
work out and I won't improve over time. And the other thing
thing people talk about Kaizen continuous improvement. The campaigns that I
ran at Toyota would start out with a reasonably good
(08:21):
response rate. Then I'd work at them every week and every month
to improve them through countless experiments. And the end of a year
they'd go from a 5 to 10% response rate. So bought a new
vehicle, got insured, got in and got financed by
Toyota to a 35% response rate.
Everybody I contacted bought a car, financed it through Toyota to ensure it through
(08:43):
Toyota worked in marketing for many, many decades now and I don't see many campaigns
and 35% response rate. Yeah, definitely a reflection of a
higher level of commitment. I just want to double click on what you said because
sometimes guests like you share these
gems and they come out so fast that people can miss them. So
I don't want people to miss that one, which is subtle but it's really
(09:06):
important. I think could write, you know, could write a book on. On this topic
alone is ex executive buy in versus
commitment. Yes. How important it is for
one share more with us. Can you think of maybe not
a specific example but an example of how that could play out
in a project where you're looking to make a change. Yes, I'm trying to put
(09:27):
it in the context of the work that it actually did where commitment was really
important. So we talked about the dealerships in the past.
So in automotive when marketing or sales
identifies the lead. So you go to the website and you go to the car
configurator, you configure your ideal car and that gets captured as
a lead by the manufacturer because they run the website, it gets passed on
(09:49):
to the dealership as a hot lead. In reality, the dealership who lives
in the real world rather than the world of, you know, marketing theory, knows
it's anything but a hot lead. So a hot lead for them is something that's
going to come in this week, next week at the latest. I already know what
the driving, I already know what they're like to be wanting to buy and I
don't know what sort of engine they're going to want and all that sort of
(10:09):
detail. And I also know that they can actually afford it.
A hot lead from a dealer is different from a hot
leader from a manufacturer. So that's how you can use it to get commitment from
people. You know, these are people with the people at the front end. Yeah. So
what a great example of going
from just the concept of buy in to commitment.
(10:31):
Commitment is a whole nother level and Nimbawashi can help us get there.
What was you say is the
reason that the C suite should care or pay attention to this?
I think there's a very simple reason, and that is that particularly in Japan, but
also in the west, the C suite needs to know what's going on
before they go to a meeting. So in Japan, if I go to a meeting
(10:54):
and introduce a new concept to the senior
people in the meeting, I'm in deep trouble. Could they expect me to have talked
to them individually beforehand to gauge their
perceptions and their interests and look for objections that I might need to overcome?
The. Mentally, it's no different in the West. So if I'm going to present something
quite important that I want them to fund eventually,
(11:15):
I want them to give up their time in the interim while I'm working out
how best to do it and how best to marshal all. But also I'm going
to need some in advance. I can't just leave it to the
end and say, here's a great idea I need to talk about when thinking about,
well, let's think about the problem and where we're going to get facts and figures
about the real problem that we have in hand and how we can set
targets. All that requires you to talk to the Swiss suit beforehand if
(11:38):
you want them to know what's going on, to be engaged
in it initially, then to be committed to seeing it through. Because all the
things, no matter how clever we think we are, all the things we invent or
decide upon may have challenges, things we haven't foreseen or couldn't possibly
foresee. Things from left field that get in the way or support you
sometimes. We had a big supporting thing in Germany where German government
(12:00):
decided halfway through the campaign that they wanted to support people to buy new
cars to get old second hand dirty cars off the road.
We had this great situation where we were saying buy a new car and we
think you're in the market and we've got this great thing from the government who's
going to give you money to swap your old car for your old banger for
a brand new car. So that you know that helped us in many ways. But
(12:20):
to be involved and to support you and to be committed, not bought in again
then they need to be informed and need to be engaged and you need to
be involved in the whole process. And that's why the Moishi, which is relatively
light, light touch most of the time is a really powerful
tool, but it's a nice name. We should be doing this in the west anyway,
shouldn't we? This is just common sense surely. I just also want to
(12:42):
double tap on what you said about not surprising the C suite
are not trying to drop in like Superman
into save the day with some great theory or idea
but. But giving them some advance notice, keeping them informed may
seem counterintuitive. It may seem like extra work. I don't know if this
goes into some of the myths around Imawashi or the collaborative process,
(13:04):
but would you agree with that and what other myths might there be around this?
So unless you've with Japanese companies, Nemoashi is relatively
unheard of. Everybody's heard of Kaizen or Lean and what have you because they're
quite been in the public domain and been discussed and
used quite widely. But Nemiwashi is something you only really practice if you work
with Japanese companies. So if your permission I'm going to broaden this out a little
(13:26):
bit to the myths around change and how we facilitate
change. The first myth that I recognize is that hence my use of the word
facilitate. Change is not something you can manage. Change is
an emergent phenomenon. So in other words, change
occurs through the interactions of lots of other people in your organization
or other organizations as are talking to each other that decides something's going to be
(13:48):
different. We talk about people resisting change, but people change all the time.
What I find in my work over many years, running large
programs of work is that people don't resist change, they resist
being changed. By others, you do something different rather than getting engaged
in deciding how you're going to change yourself. But also we have
this again, this western thing where we have we set
(14:10):
north stars where we want to get to this nirvana we're never going to
reach, of course, but that's the nirvana we're going to aim for. We have really
complicated plans about how we're going to get there. But if anything
changes, then the plan starts to fall apart. And as I think
it was von Clausewitz said a long time ago, no plan survives first
contact with the enemy plans. And I think Eisenhower said during the Second
(14:32):
World War that plans are nothing, planning is
everything. So lots of great gems here, folks. If you're
listening, we'll have links to these in the show notes.
But I want to dig into
Nimawashi if you would share a bit about the
steps, maybe walk us through an illustration in the real world
(14:55):
of what it might look like. So in order, Nimawashi applies in the
context of how you build consensus around an A3. So we talked about an A3
sheet. An A3 has a series of steps and the steps are you define the
problem. You'd be amazed how many times I go and talk to people in the
organizations. They're not actually clear what the problem is. You go talk to marketing,
sales and service and they think it's all radically different. So the first step is
(15:16):
actually agreeing what the problem is. If we can really get going, then the next
step is then you. You identify what you know about the problem. So you have
to go to the Gemba. Go where? To go to see where things are really
going. That means getting out of your office. They
professor called Steve Blank and works at Barclay, I think in the USA
in the Bay Area. He's been a serial entrepreneur and he says there are no
(15:36):
facts inside the building. So get outside the building and go to the
Gemma. Go see where things are happening and learn by observing what's going on. What
Toyota presses Kotori to cause Genji Genbutsu Go see for yourself
rather than Lion Khan reports. So you go and see what's going on. You
gather facts and figures. Then you set your stretch targets, your targets you want to
achieve. Basically now you have an understanding. Then you go and do root cause analysis
(15:59):
after that trying to work out what the problems are. Then you will define your
interventions, then you'll plan those interventions and then you'll plan,
follow up. Because obviously we need to be able to monitor, measure, measure, monitor,
manage this working precise, probably all be done at the
same time. So let's take, if you think about this step by step, the
problem. I have a problem with the marketing campaign. I want to improve increase my
(16:20):
repurchase rate for new vehicle sales with existing customers.
So I need to go and talk to the dealerships because they're the ones who
actually sell cars. And you go and talk to marketing inside Ford,
sorry, inside Toyota. I need to go talk to financial services because
they're the one who going to be saying yes you can buy a car, no
you can't buy a car for whatever reason. And you go talk to the field
force. I might need to go and talk to the printer about some things I
(16:42):
might be wanting to do some vouchers I want to offer as part of the
deal. So go and talk to different people about the problem and I capture that
detail the consensus as part of the A3 sheet, a
little section at the top. There's a great article by the way by John Schott
called Toyota's Secret Weapon or Toyota's Secret the A theory report.
An MIT slurred management review article from 1987. It's got a
(17:04):
good framework to use, one that I tend to use. So we've now
agreed by talking around, by doing some Nemo ashi what the problem is. Then I
need to go and find out some facts and figures about the problem. So how
many people are buying cars that bought one previously? What are they buying? What did
they buy previously, how much are they paying, which dealership did they buy from, where
they cluster all those sorts of things, what stops them buying? So you need to
(17:25):
go and talk to the people who know what's going on again. So I'll go
to the dealership again to the field force and go to financial services. Probably won't
go to marketing quite so easily because they're not so relevant. I'll go and then
I'll define the next stage which is what I know about the problem. So
more Nemoashi, more talking to people, more showing and comparing
things. It's a one on one thing rather than a meeting. We're not going to
(17:45):
have a meeting. I'm going to go and talk to them. I'm going to get
out of my office and go to the dealerships and talk to dealer principals and
sales managers and the dealers to find out what's really going on. So now we
know what the problem is. We've agreed that we know what the we gathered a
load of facts and figures describing the problem. Now I can set my targets
that we want to achieve based on mindset of the problem.
(18:05):
And again, more in my show with different people. I'm going to talk to finance,
I'm going to talk to sales, I'm going to talk to the call center, I'm
going to talk to dealers because obviously they want to sell vehicles as well. I'm
going to talk to other people that have anything to do with this and we're
going to set my targets. If my targets are low, 1% improvement,
5% improvement, I can probably achieve them without doing a great deal different.
If they're 10% or 20% or 30% different,
(18:28):
then doing more of the same won't work. So I need to be more creative
about what I do in a minute. I made a mistake early on in my
time as head of CRM at Twitter and I appeared in the meeting and I
did some calculations and I said to my Japanese colleagues, I
think we could probably achieve 30% if I work really, really hard. And like a
fool, next time, the minute skim around, my target had been set to 30%.
(18:51):
He dared to support Japanese colleagues. So now I had a target I had to
achieve. There's no maybe now, I had to achieve it. So I had to
pull it all the stops. And then it became even more important. So we set
our targets we want to achieve. Then the next step is we're introducing root cause
analysis to understand, not I understand the facts and figures, but I need to understand
why things are occurring, why, what people buy and why do they buy, why do
(19:11):
people not buy, what do they buy, why do they not buy, etc. So I
can go and figure, how do I calculate the right offer to make for them
an individual finance offer who can't have one because
the maths don't work out at the end of the day. So, and again I'm
talking to finance again, I'm talking to some of the people in sales again and
other parts of the organization around the next challenge I'd have, which is,
(19:32):
you know, how do we understand the root cause of the problem that might occur
and the opportunity I want to achieve. Now I've got to 30% target, you know,
staring over me too, having done that, then we go around the same process again,
looking at interventions. What am I going to do? What am I going to provide
to hit my 30% so I know what the problem is, I
know I've got loads of facts and figures. I know the root cause of the
(19:52):
problem, why they do and don't buy. I know my target and I also know
Now I can use that to identify what I'm going to do. I
described earlier on we used a well
proven campaign borrowed from a deal in
Bolton in Lancashire, North England and adapted that
as our test bed as our starting point. Then we go on the
(20:13):
process. We're now agreed what we're going to do. I've gone to talk to the
printer, can they print the vouchers they need to do? We've ran a competition, can
we do the is legal, happy with the competition we want to run, etc.
Can I get my print campaign, my print schedule all
organized? Are the dealers expecting, are the field force engaged and
informed? Are they able to force you get the point? Then
(20:35):
I go through the planning process and again one put from other people to
Nemoashi and then I identify the follow up that we're going to be doing because
with Toyota we do Kaizen. So having launched the campaign,
having been to that first round of Nemoashi then I go create an improvement
a three where I'm trying new things out afterwards. So we've run the campaign, we've
got a 5 to 10% response rate which is already pretty good but not good
(20:57):
enough because my topic is now 30% because I was an idiot in
a meeting and I set myself a target I had to achieve Though every time
we ran the campaign we changed some things. We talked to the same
person, to the dealer principals about some dealers were very successful at
selling cars that they individualized offers to customers, some were not. We
wanted to talk to the ones at and said what did you do? And also
(21:18):
the ones that weren't successful and said what did you do? Or what didn't you
do? We thought we changed the spreadsheets we produce on a weekly basis
to, to the dealers to say okay, here are your target customers
and we added more information that we could do to help them say okay, so
they know what you, what you're driving, what your monthly rate is, what your balloon
is, what your down payment was, what we're going to be offering you all sorts
of information so they're ready to go and talk to them and proactively rather
(21:41):
than hope that they're going to come in at the weekend because we've got a
great offer for you, key for key. It's a wonderful offer and if you, if
you take part there's a competition to win free financing in terms of no other
than the cost, no additional financing fees by taking part in a prize tour.
So there's all those things going on at the same time Week by week, month
by month. At the end of a year, we'd gone from a 5 to 10%
(22:01):
response rate. So bought a new vehicle, financed it, insured it to
a 35% response rate by loosely applying kaizen
venue a 3 improvement. A 3 using more nemo ashi
because now I want to get people to change their behavior. As I said at
the start, the dealers, when they'd get a lead from manufacturer would say this is
going to be rubbish. I'm not going to bother. We had great hot
(22:23):
leads for individuals who would highly like to buy a car with a
great offer, an individualized finance offer for them. So, you know, we
had a great story to tell, but we needed to persuade the dealers to
do something different rather than just ignoring it. So we had to engage the field
sales forces for financial services and for sales, new vehicle
sales. They go and support the dealers say, have you got your sheet? They
(22:45):
got the same sheets as well. You've got your sheet. Let's talk about these individual
customers and let's work out. Let's start do a few calls together. And we also
talked to customers about what attracted them and made them borrowing, which is all that
fed into continuous improvement Kaizen to achieve those
targets that if I'd worked for another car company, wouldn't have been possible. Really
fascinating walkthrough it. One of the things I like is sort of built into
(23:07):
the process is you're taking a guide versus a
hero approach by insisting on
collaboration and insisting on ensuring that,
number one, you're asking the right questions. But people
don't feel like you're coming in with a solution.
We did provide solutions at the end, but the solutions weren't invented by me. The
(23:29):
original idea came from another dealer who was very successful with this campaign. If you
work for manufacturer, an auto manufacturer, they think the idea of a great campaign is
a glossy brochure in an E4 format
full of very expensive photographs of always young people.
You know, because people buy cars. Not if you go talk to a dealer.
A dealer's idea of a perfect campaign is one sheet of a three paper
(23:51):
saying, Dear Mr. Smith, please come in on a Saturday. Here's what you're buying,
here's what you pay, here's what you're driving, here's what you're paying. Come on Saturday,
you can have a new car. Same vehicle again, same monthly payment. We'll see you
on Saturday. That's the dealer's idea of a great campaign, not a Dottie brochure.
So my job is to be A bridge between the manufacturer, Toyota and their
dealerships. And I engage also with the people to be support me in
(24:12):
the process. But I was just merely a facilitator using
the framework that Toyota provided to me on a plate.
Yeah, I love both the collaborative aspect of it,
but also the fact that it gets on an A3, you know, it can fit
on an A3. A single sheet of paper makes it simple. So
I did have other spreadsheets with calculations of pricing and what have you.
(24:35):
And I had a process map that I drew up separately as well to show
that I have the process of creating a campaign so I could teach others how
to do it. After I left, I was only interim head of CRM and I
found my replacement and left that they needed what was going on. So we had
a process model for them to work through as well. More Toyota thinking. The other
thing is that there's this idea of continuous improvement. So I've worked
for many, you know, quite some decades now in marketing, and what I typically see
(24:57):
is marketers will run a campaign, then they'll move on to the next campaign. There
won't be this process of pulling it apart, looking to ways to improve
it. I mean, mine was driven by eight working for Toyota, but I had a
30% target. So I have to keep improving it every little, every
week or every month, otherwise, you know, I'm toast. But that Kaizen
process, when you win it with Toyota, that's everybody. It's part of everybody's day job.
(25:19):
I mean, I showed this book, I hope you can see this. It's got an
old book. 40 years, 30 million. 20 million ideas. 40 years, 20
million ideas. These are often small ideas
identified by people on the ground doing the day job at the
Gemba, where things happen that they implement within
a month at very low cost and doesn't go through this big central
(25:42):
committee of, you know, collecting suggestions that then get ignored. As a
great markatoonist, you know, Tom Fishbourne, the marketoonist, has a great campaign,
has a great set of cartoons, and there's one about idea boxes. And
the idea is in. The other side is a shredder, shredding the ideas
into the idea. So at Toyota, it's everybody's
day job to identify opportunities to improve things, then to use the
(26:04):
Kaizen process, use an A3 of its significance eyes
to go through that structure process to make sure it actually works and go through
it quickly. So you said something important earlier on. It sometimes does take
a little bit longer than coming up with an idea by yourself and writing it
into this wonderful 50 page presentation to present at the next management board meeting.
But it's much more quicker and much more likely to be successful
(26:25):
than those wonderful presentations because by the time I get to a meeting
with an A3, everybody knows what's involved, everybody knows what I expect
of them. Everybody's been involved. And I was on the back of the A3. I
always have a little box, a series of boxes for signatures for all the key
players. And when they wrote the signature in the box, I had permission from them
to proceed with the campaign. When they got that last signature, that was it. I
(26:47):
was ready to go. They'd committed time, resources, money, people,
energy to fulfilling what's on the A3. I was ready to
go. And everything at Toyota typically gets run through these A3 type sheets.
And many Japanese companies run in a similar in a similar way. I have used
it also in western companies. It's a bit of a struggle to use in some.
I used to do a major European airline for example, as part of a big
(27:09):
we taught it to them how to do this process as part of using Toyota
car to the Toyota's, you know, way of business agile. But it's not easy because
it's counterintuitive. You know, some heroes creates a wonderful presentation,
50 pages long, presented a board meeting. They create a business case
which is designed to get funding. Once the business case has been
funded, then it's abandoned and forgotten about because I've got the funding. That's what its
(27:31):
purpose was. Things are different. You
write your plan and you calculate what funding you need to make it
work. But remember that last part of the A3 is follow
up. And that follow up is about measuring
how successful you were and working out how to standardize the things that
work well and improve through plan, do check, act kaizen
(27:54):
the things that need improving. You know what I love about
the model is it's really embedding continuous
transformation into the culture of an organization. It's just the operating
model. This is what we do. We're asking you to help us continuously
co create the future.
(28:14):
Yeah, very well done. We have got to speaking of airlines, we
we need to land the plane. But before we
do, I have one last question I have for you which is what I ask
all my guests because of the name of the show is called the Delighted
Customers podcast. What delights you as a
customer? Yes. Okay. I think
(28:37):
I'm not atypical as a customer. If I'm going to answer the question, I think
I'm going To refer to yet another idea, the Servcore model
from the 1980s. It's been around for a long time,
been proven many, many times over and they identified what drives service
quality. And out of that and out of much research into many
different companies and I've used in my work at airlines, other companies as well, they
(28:59):
came up with a rater model. And the rater model says the things we look
for in service quality are reliability, assurance, having good staff,
tangible, so buildings, communications, uniforms, etc. Empathy.
I include compassion with empathy and
responsiveness in most companies, in most situations, with
most customers, the most important point by far is reliability.
(29:22):
Doing what you say on the tin. I'm in time out to the same
degree of quality so that I know exactly what I'm expecting. Because don't
forget service quality. In the old calculation, the
old equation, if you like, there's a difference between perceptions and expectations.
If I know what to expect and you deliver that, that's going to be high
quality buy, you know, absolutely might not be particularly sparkling, might be Ryanair
(29:44):
compared to Emirates, but if I know what I'm expecting, you
deliver it time and time again. That's quality and only the customer defines quality.
Deliver what you see on a tin, time in, time out the same way and
I'll be a happy customer because knowing exactly what to expect. Excellent. Well, I'm
always learning from you. I appreciate you and thank you so much
for joining us. All the way for Germany, from Germany. If people wanted to
(30:06):
get a hold of you and learn more or maybe even bring you on board
to help them solve some problems, what would be the best way for them to
connect with you? This way, by, by by far is to find me on
LinkedIn, Graham Hill and, and reach out to me there.
I'm quite active on LinkedIn and very and I, you know, a
lot of people helped me when I was early on in my career and I'm
(30:26):
happy to help others as a consequence, whether they want to work with me or
just want advice. Happy to help. Always happy to help. Excellent. Dr. Graham Hill, thank
you so much for being on the delighted customers podcast. My pleasure, Mark, thank you
indeed.
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