We view errors as opportunities for learning. Rather than blaming individuals, the organization takes corrective actions and distributes knowledge about each experience broadly. Learning is a continuous company-wide process as superiors motivate and train subordinates; as predecessors do the same for successors; and as team members at all levels share knowledge with one another. —The Toyota Way document 2001, Toyota Motor Corporation The beginning of the 21st century has continued the turbulence, uncertainty, and intense competition of the end of the 20th century. Long gone are the days when a company could set up shop, make a product well, and then milk that product for years, hanging on to its original competitive advantage. Adaptation, innovation, and flexibility have knocked this old business approach off its pedestal and have become the necessary ingredients for survival as well as the hallmarks of a successful business. To sustain such organizational behavior requires one essential attribute: the ability to learn. In fact, the highest compliment we can pay to a business in today’s business environment is that it is a true “learning organization.” Peter Senge popularized this concept in his book, The Fifth Discipline, over a decade ago, defining a learning organization as a place (Senge, 1990): ... where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together. Senge focuses on “new patterns of thinking” and learning to learn. In other words, a learning organization does not only adopt and develop new business or technical skills; it puts in place a second level of learning—how to learn new skills, knowledge, and capabilities. To become a true learning organization, the very learning capacity of the organization should be developing and growing over time, as it helps its members adapt to a continually changing competitive environment. Of all the institutions I’ve studied or worked for, including world-class companies and major universities, I believe Toyota is the best learning organization. The reason is that it sees standardization and innovation as two sides of the same coin, melding them in a way that creates great continuity. It is one thing for individual employees to come up with innovative ways to do things. But to be transferred to organization learning, the new way must be standardized and practiced across the organization until a better way is discovered. This is the foundation for the Toyota Way of learning—standardization punctuated by innovation, which gets translated into new standards. TPS itself is designed to push team members to think and learn and grow. Toyota evolved out of innovation, originally in making looms and then in automobile design, and ever since, the leadership has worked hard to keep this innovative spirit alive. Possibly the most important aspect is Toyota’s relentless application of the more “mundane” process of continuous improvement, which results in thousands of little lessons learned. Company should learn from its mistakes, determining the root cause of problems, providing effective countermeasures, empowering people to implement those measures, and having a process for transferring the new knowledge to the right people to make it part of the company’s repertoire of understanding and behavior.