“One Friday I gave a report of an activity we'd been doing [a plant expansion], and I spoke very positively about it, I bragged a little. After two or three minutes, I sat down. And Mr. Cho [Fujio Cho, now the chairman of Toyota worldwide] kind of looked at me. I could see he was puzzled. He said, ‘Jim-san. We all know you are a good manager, otherwise we would not have hired you. But please talk to us about your problems so we can all work on them together.’”
