“Ohno was absolutely ruthless, employees and suppliers lived in fear of him.” I would say that while Taiichi Ohno was truly remarkable that doesn’t mean he did everything right.
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The difference between respect and disrespect is not avoiding avoiding criticism. In fact often if you respect someone you can be much more direct and critical than you can with someone you treat as though they don’t have the ability to listen to hard truths and improve. I think we often have so little respect for people we just avoid dealing with anything touchy because we don’t want to risk they won’t be able to react to the issues raised and will instead just react as if they have been personally attacked.
It may also be that it is easier to train managers to behave in this way than to effectively deal with though issues. But that is not training them to respect people, it is your organization accepting you don’t respect your people (managers and others) so just train people how to behave in a way that avoids difficult areas.
continue reading: Respect for People
