TeamAssurance

    What is Toyota kata?

    Short answer

    Toyota kata is a set of practice routines, described by Mike Rother, for building the habit of scientific thinking in an organisation. The improvement kata has four steps: understand the direction, grasp the current condition, set the next target condition, and experiment toward it. The coaching kata is a five-question routine a manager uses to coach someone through those steps.

    Last updated · TeamAssurance

    Why "kata"

    A kata is a practised pattern of movements in martial arts, repeated until it becomes second nature. Rother used the word for management routines that are practised deliberately until scientific thinking becomes the default way people approach problems.

    The improvement kata

    1. Understand the direction or challenge. Where the organisation is trying to go, usually set through strategy deployment.
    2. Grasp the current condition. Observe and measure how the process actually performs now.
    3. Establish the next target condition. A specific, dated description of how the process should operate soon, closer to the challenge but not all the way.
    4. Experiment toward the target condition. Run small, rapid PDCA cycles, each with a prediction, and learn from each result, including the failed ones.

    The coaching kata

    The coach meets the learner at the process, often daily, and asks the same five questions:

    1. What is the target condition?
    2. What is the actual condition now?
    3. What obstacles are preventing you from reaching the target condition, and which one are you addressing now?
    4. What is your next step, and what do you expect?
    5. When can we go and see what we have learned from that step?

    The routine keeps the coaching on the learner's thinking rather than on the coach's answers.

    How kata differs from a kaizen event

    A kaizen event concentrates effort into a week; kata is a daily habit of small experiments. Many organisations use both: events for larger changes, kata to keep improvement going between them and to develop people.

    Kata and daily management

    Tier meetings provide the rhythm and the measures: the current condition is on the board, the target condition is agreed with the tier above, and the daily coaching conversation can happen at the board after the huddle.

    Common failures

    • Setting target conditions as outcomes ("reduce defects by 20%") without describing how the process should run.
    • Coaches giving solutions instead of asking the questions.
    • Running the routine for a few weeks and stopping before it becomes a habit.

    How TeamAssurance helps

    TeamAssurance holds the pieces of a kata routine where teams already look: the challenge comes from the strategic goal tree, the current condition is the measure on the tier board, the target condition and experiments are recorded as PDCA cycles in the continuous improvement capability, and the coaching conversation is scheduled through leader standard work.

    Explore Continuous Improvement Request a demo

    Frequently asked questions

    Who created Toyota kata?

    Mike Rother described the routines in his 2009 book Toyota Kata, based on research into how Toyota managers develop people. Toyota itself does not use the name.

    What is a target condition?

    A description of how a process should operate at a specific date in the near future: the pattern of work, the measures it should achieve and the conditions that should hold. It is a step toward a larger challenge, not the final goal.

    How is Toyota kata related to PDCA?

    Each experiment in the improvement kata is a small PDCA cycle with an explicit prediction. Kata adds the structure of target conditions and the coaching routine around the cycles.

    ← Back to the glossary