Toyota Kata Coaching

Toyota Kata Coaching With Fortune Buchholtz

Business and academic leaders advocate coaching as crucial for growth. In Agile, diverse methods like GROW and OSKAR thrive, yet Toyota Kata Coaching emerges as a standout for its simplicity and effectiveness. 

In this Hands-on Agile Meetup of May 7, 2024, Fortune Buchholtz explores its potential as a superior Agile coaching tool. Whether confirming its benefits or broadening your coaching repertoire, the recording offers valuable insights.

Abstract: Toyota Kata Coaching

Today, we see a slowly accelerating movement in business management towards coaching. Even the Harvard Business Review and McKinsey now acknowledge — see below — that coaching is the best approach to managing and growing employees.

After decades of Agile, we also strongly understand that coaching is the preferred method of engagement at all organizational levels. There’s a wide variety of coaching options used in Agile today: GROW, OSKAR, ACL, STEPPA, etc.

Let’s add a technique from Toyota, whose attitudes and methods are embedded in our Agile practices in many ways. It’s called Toyota Kata Coaching. And please don’t be fooled by its deceptive simplicity; it’s’ probably the best coaching method for Agile. Watch the Meetup’s recording to learn about Kata and add another coaching tool for your Scrum Master or Agile Coaching collection.

Find Fortune’s slides here.

Questions and Answers

During the Q&A part on Toyota Kata Coaching, Fortune answered the following questions, among others:

• Toyota coaching is top-to-bottom; does feedback from the bottom go directly to the top?
• “Grasp the initial condition”—that is a scientific baseline measurement. Doesn’t this foster biases or “gaming the metric,” aka the measurement at the end of the experiment? (ARNE W.)
• What recommendations do you have for presenting this Kata to a manager who suggests scrum masters need to be less “coachy” and more “delivery” focused? 
• Do workers in the factory really coach the management? Isn’t that a many-to-few scaling problem? I presume that is not “coaching,” as we usually understand it.
• Curious about your emphasis on Women in this slide!
• You said the 5 questions are the Shu-style. What do Ha and Ri look like?
• I’m curious if you have ways to integrate Agile and Kata so it doesn’t feel like more meetings that are not valuable. 
• How does a company ensure that the bottom people “coaching” the top ones aren’t intimidated?

Meet Fortune Buchholtz

Is that Really Your Name?

“Yes. Let me tell you a story: hippie parents with poor taste in classical music and an unfortunate infatuation with Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. It’s really that simple.

Around my house, you’re more likely to hear Dexter Gordon and Brian Eno. But here I am Fortune, the Empress of the World. Pleased to meet you.

If you enjoy the Carmina Burana, be sure to listen to the other 2 pieces in Orff’s NSFW Trionfi, the Catulli Carmina and the Trionfo di Afrodite, both influenced by Stravinsky.”

When Did You Drink the Agile Kool-Aid?

“I was working as a front-end dev and PRINCE 2 project monster when I was ensnared by Jeff Sutherland’s dangerous brew in 2005. I became a Scrum Master on Wall Street in 2006. At Cisco in 2009, I was enraptured by the Toyota Production System. And we’ve been a throuple ever since.

My LinkedIn will show you I’ve worked in a variety of industries and Agile roles, primarily in Silicon Valley and Big Tech. Currently, I remain a certified Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Agile Coach, although recently I was dubbed a most dangerous ¡Kanbanista! Please don’t turn me in, k thnx.

My husband and I now live in Nottingham, England—Robin Hood, the Sheriff, Maid Marian, Sherwood Forest—it’s all real, I tell you. Real!”

Connect With Fortune Buchholtz

Fortune Buchholtz on LinkedIn