Case study/Toyota Financial Services—Creating a foundation for leadership development

✍ Scribed by David Berke; Judy Fike

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Weight: 97 KB
• Volume: 27
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1093-6092
• DOI: 10.1002/lia.1216

✦ Synopsis

ow can organizations establish a leadership strategy and implementation process that goes well beyond the typical approach of using training as the primary or only methodology? The short answer is that they need to develop a talent mind-set-an orientation in which the organization's talent (its people) is recognized as a significant part of the organization's competitive advantage.

But an orientation is not enough. Organizations must also have internal systems that value and support using development and other talent management processes to maximize results, and they must hold leaders accountable for employing these processes.

This requires assessing performance accurately and investing differentially in the development of talent. In this context, development has a firm foundation because it is recognized for what it should be: a means to maximize performance and therefore results.

About five years ago, Toyota Financial Services (TFS) began an incremental process of establishing a leadership strategy that reflects both an orientation toward performance and a firm foundation for development.