"…. Japanese managers, who all spend a mandatory year or two on the factory floor, identify with their subordinates and feel their responsibility for their overall well-being. Workers bring to their jobs not only hands and muscles, but intelligence, attitudes and feelings. They are asked to contribute ideas, analyze problems and recommend solutions, and are trained so that they have the means to do so. Decisions start in the middle and flow upwards, gathering consensus along the way so that when they reach top management, approval is mostly all that’s required…"

Years ago, when we were investigating the business model behind TAQAT, we had a big fear about the privileges given to normal employees in the system. Giving the permission to normal employees to "Suggest" a company objective or to create a strategic project that fulfills a certain goal was kind of strange to us.

We found references in books speaking about this same point "Effectiveness of the contribution of front line employees". This is what happened in IBM years ago:  The CEO decided to open the door to all employees to suggest a new company mission statement.  In few weeks, 350000 Employees were contributing in this through the company private network! Needless to say the outcome was great.

These days I was reading an article about "Japanese Management" to find that TAQAT framework shares common concepts, let us discuss:

The "factory floor": No factory floors in the Cyber space, but the expression means "Being on TOP of the details! Being aware about all department activities." Using TAQAT managers will have for each department a page that summarizes all current projects, to-dos, communication issues and Scorecards.

"..responsibility for their overall well-being": This is being expressed in TAQAT secret sauce. "The mixture between the Social Network features and the day-to-day work management features". TAQAT allows employees to create Social blogs the same way it allows them to document a job-role in the system knowledgebase.

"Intelligence, attitudes and feelings":  TAQAT creates loyalty between employee and their job-roles, because It transforms their Duties from "Implementing" roles to "Enhancing and Continuously Improving" them. This happens by being involved in several activities (Documentation, issues tracking, .) that target transforming the Job-role into a mature SOP (Standard Operating Procedure).

"..contribute ideas, analyze problems and recommend solutions": This is EXACTLY our communication logs module! Enabling all staff an equal voice to boost the company up. TAQAT moves forward to filter these ideas/problems and transforms them into active projects or to-dos ready for implementation.

"Decisions start in the middle": TAQAT creates strategic alignment by making the company objectives clear to the entire staff, once this happens it allows everyone  to propose strategic projects for implementation. Like what Japanese management says "approval is mostly all that’s required.."

When we created TAQAT, with all its innovative features, we were looking for successful management ideas, expressed in models and implemented in successful companies. This time we found that what we built is what is being practically implemented in SUCCESFULL NATIONS!