Barry McCarthy, Toyota as a Development Company

Joining me for Episode #334, all the way from Australia, is Barry McCarthy. Barry spent more than 15 years in leadership roles with Toyota in Australia and now works as an Associate with consulting firm Honsha. We were able to spend a lot of time talking when I participated in Honsha’s Executive Development Mission trip to Japan late last year. One thing we talked about quite a bit was Barry’s experience with Toyota being “a development company,” as I blogged about here. In our discussion, Barry talks about why he was “skeptical” about Lean before he joined Toyota. But, he evolved as Toyota continues to evolve. Why is Barry afraid that Lean (outside of Toyota) might get stuck in the past? We’ll talk about all of that and more.