Why Does Scientific Thinking Matter? What is it?
What Is ‘Kata’?
‘Toyota Kata’ represents two routines that when deliberately practised develop highly desirable behaviours (habits) – a) scientific thinking and b) coaching of scientific thinking.
This begs the question ‘what is scientific thinking?’ From a business perspective, scientific thinking is the logical and rational way of consistently and reliably working through the unknown toward a predetermined (and required) goal. It is how people will strive to achieve a level of performance your organization has not been able to previously achieve.
The first ‘kata’, the Improvement Kata, arose from Mike Rother’s first research question (around 2003) which was “What are the unseen managerial routines and thinking that lie behind Toyota’s success with continuous improvement and adaptation?” There were several ‘unseen managerial routines’ identified all having a common base – scientific thinking. Rother was then challenged with how such a base behaviour could be developed. To use his words, “telling people what’s good doesn’t change behaviours”. Hence arose his second research question which was “How can other companies develop similar routines and thinking in their organizations?” In answering this question, the two routines emerged:
- The Improvement Kata as a pattern for starting to learn scientific thinking; a means by which we could raise our conscious awareness. (Raising conscious awareness is a key step in learning to do something new.)
- The Coaching Kata as a pattern for starting to learn coaching; again, a means by which we could raise our conscious awareness.
“The best short introduction to Toyota Kata I’ve seen.”
Mike Rother