The Toyota Tutorial

American car makers have given Toyota every reason to strut. Even before the so-called “great recession,” Toyota was cleaning the clocks of Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. Its reputation for quality and safety was unsurpassed. It’s now focused on damage control.

One part of Toyota’s present tutorial is to avoid overconfidence. Overconfidence is hard to avoid, however, when you’re already the big dog and the smaller dogs begin hemorrhaging.

No matter how highly regarded any employer or employee is, there’s an accident waiting to happen somewhere down the road. How one deals with it is as important as what caused the accident and what’s done to repair the damage.

It’s too early to tell how Toyota’s tutorial in this regard will turn out. Last fall, Toyota announced that the accidents caused by gas pedals sticking were solely the result of floor mats. The floor mats were being replaced when the company recently announced that it also needed to install a steel-reinforced bar in the pedal assemblies. To accomplish this, Toyota has ordered a staggering recall and halted production.

Admitting that sales will be affected by these extraordinary actions, Toyota says it’s not nearly as concerned about sales as about safety. That’s a good line — and it fits with the company’s reputation for safety.

But Toyota will continue to be under several microscopes. If something else is found to have been a contributor to the problem, if it’s determined that the need for the steel bar should have been known when the floor mats were initially blamed, or if the experts conclude that all these problems should have been discovered well before last fall, Toyota’s black eye will become darker.

The point is that when an employer or an employee realizes a problem, immediate corrective action is necessary. There may be nothing harder for most of us to do, but there’ nothing more important.