The World Cafe Story of Fukushima Toyopet

Story sent in by Daisuke Kawaguchi, Chief Researcher at Human Value, Inc. Japan (translators and publishers for the World Cafe book in Japanese)

Fukushima Toyopet is a Toyota car dealership located in Fukushima, Japan. They were founded in 1956 and now own more than 20 shops; about 560 employees work for them.

Recently they have been challenged to change their organizational culture from their past hierarchical basis to a more dialogic model where people can create their desired future through conversations that matter. They are now cultivating a culture with more autonomy, collaboration, and values for realizing a true partnership with their customers and local community.

Their journey began by holding a large-scale meeting with all the 560 employees invited and sharing every one’s experiences, thoughts, and desires through open conversations. They named the meeting as “ReBORN Meeting” in the hope of unleashing the strengths and possibilities of all the people for better future. (“ReBORN” is also known as Toyota’s Brand concept.) They applied the methods of Appreciative Inquiry and the World Café to their meeting for enhancing openness, creativity, reflection, and effectiveness. The design team members devoted to creating café-style spaces that enabled warming and relaxing atmosphere.

As this was the first time for them to get together for open conversations, they seemed a little nervous and worried in the beginning. However, as the conversations progressed, smiles appeared, and energy and enthusiasm were gradually unleashed. They mostly enjoyed café conversation about their personal high-points in their work life and the future possibility of their company.

Their first challenge went successfully as all the employee experienced the value of the conversations. And as a next step, they started to expand those value from the special ReBORN event meeting into their daily conversations by fostering facilitators who support open dialogue in their workplace.

About 30 facilitators from all the shops were assigned (some of them applied voluntarily), and had the chance to learn philosophy and approaches for hosting conversations that matter. They practiced conversational leadership in their workplace. And their second ReBORN meeting, held on Feb. 2015 (half a year later the first one was held), was totally designed and facilitated by them. Compared to the first ReBORN meeting, their way of conversation seemed to be evolving. I, myself attended the meeting as a support person of Human Value, and was especially impressed to see the beautiful and peaceful weaving at the world cafe where every single participant spoke up to share their thoughts and aspirations and listened carefully to each other. I was able to sense that the cultural shift was gradually happening.

In order to continue to foster the change and the values they gained after the second ReBORN meeting, they deployed leadership development opportunities for shop mangers who have been playing key roles for organizational transformation. Through half a year of reflective and dialogical practice and inquiry process, they grew as conversational leaders to be able to enhance the quality of relationships and collective thoughts in their workplace.

These are stories of Fukushima Toyopet’s conversational leadership in practice. Now Mr. Sato, the president of Fukushima Toyopet, often says that his critical role is to create the open conversational spaces for all the employees. They are currently struggling with a new challenge called “Oujyuen”, which means “helping each other” to realize genuine collaboration. Though their journey has just started and is still going on, I truly believe that they can shape a better future themselves and become an indispensable part of developing the social capital of the Fukushima region.

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