Mike Rother

“The competitive advantage of an organization lies not so much in the solutions themselves—whether lean techniques, today’s profitable product, or any other—but in the ability of the organization to understand conditions and create fitting, smart solutions.”
― Mike Rother, Toyota Kata : Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results

“There are perhaps only three things we can and need to know with certainty: where we are, where we want to be, and by what means we should maneuver the unclear territory between here and there. And the rest is supposed to be somewhat unclear, because we cannot see into the future! The way from where we are to where we want to be next is a gray zone full of unforeseeable obstacles, problems, and issues that we can only discover along the way. The best we can do is to know the approach, the means, we can utilize for dealing with the unclear path to a new desired condition, not what the content and steps of our actions—the solutions—will be.”
― Mike Rother, Toyota Kata : Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results