How Interconnected Thinking Builds Better Products (And Why Your Org Chart Is Lying To You)
The Toyota lesson that changed how I build everything.
In my twenties, I flew to Japan every six weeks to learn the Toyota production system.
One day I’m watching three people work on a carpet. A carpet for a car trunk.
The design engineer sat next to the manufacturing guy who’d have to install it. The purchasing person who had to make sure it didn’t cost a fortune sat across from them.
All three in the same room, with me, the supplier, figuring it out together.
That carpet taught me more about building products than my entire Engineering Degree and MBA combined.
The Thing Nobody Tells You About “Silos”
Everyone wants to “break down silos.”
But here’s what Toyota taught me: The problem isn’t different departments. The problem is people thinking their piece doesn’t affect the whole.
If the design engineer makes it perfect but impossible to install, you’ve got a problem.
If purchasing says yes but manufacturing can’t build it reliably, you’ve got a bigger problem.
The part affects the whole car. The whole car affects the customer. The customer affects your business.
You can’t optimize one piece and ignore the rest.
The Screwdriver Wall
Toyota applied this thinking to everything, even their tools.
Every screwdriver had one spot on the wall.
If it wasn’t there, someone else was using it. You didn’t waste time looking because the system told you exactly where things stood.
Think about your last week. How much time did you spend looking for information someone already had? Asking “who owns this?” Waiting for someone to get back about something urgent?
Toyota made everything visible for everyone, so nothing fell through the cracks.
Where This Shows Up? Everywhere.
I’ve carried this for 40 years.
When I’m making a business decision, I always ask: What is the “whole” we are trying to optimize?
At Bose, our team ran the website, with 82 people on the full team. If my team hit their numbers but the company was losing money, the team numbers didn’t matter.
Most people focus on their piece and assume someone else handles the rest.
That’s how you end up with something that doesn’t work.
A Different Approach
When I worked in automotive, I saw both systems.
At GM, we had to put seven key product measures on a flat piece of carpet. T-shaped. Simple.
The GM team said: “Toyota averages six key metrics. That’s how they get great quality. We need seven.”
I’m looking at this going, “It’s a T-shape. Width, length, maybe thickness is enough. We’re inventing dimensions to hit seven.”
They were copying the number without understanding the system.
Later, that exact same week at Toyota in Lexington, KY, we’re looking at a way more complex molded piece.
I asked: “This area here, your tolerance is plus or minus two millimeters. If you could give us plus or minus five, we could save you 10-15 cents per unit.”
The Toyota engineer: “Plus or minus five? No one sees that area. Let’s do it.”
Then he pointed to a visible edge: “Here’s what matters. Length and width. Two measurements.”
Different approach. Focus on what the customer actually sees. What actually matters.
The Framework
The Interconnected Systems Checklist:
What does this impact? List every department, process, person affected
Where’s the visibility gap? What information is hidden that should be visible?
Who owns the outcome? Not the task. The outcome.
What’s the customer impact? If they never see it, how hard should you optimize?
Are we measuring what matters? Or copying someone else’s metrics?
How This Played Out With BusyBox
I hired a marketing agency. They kept showing me reports: “3X return on ad spend! Sometimes 4X!”
It looked fantastic.
Then I added up the full stack. Their fees, the ad spend, actual margin. Showed it to them.
We were losing money.
They kept pointing at the Amazon report like that was the only number that mattered.
But I can’t just focus on one department and pretend the rest doesn’t exist.
They wanted to optimize their metrics. I needed to look at the whole system.
Fired them in the spring.
The Agency Problem
I get emails every day: “We’ll run your ads on pure commission. Pay only when on the revenue we drive.”
Sounds great until I ask: Will you buy the ads too?
They always say no. No skin in the game.
Compare that to B&H Photo. When they buy a BusyBox, they have ~30 points of margin. They use some of that for ads, creative, training, etc. to move products.
They bought in. They own the outcome.
Toyota taught me everyone needs to own the outcome together.
How To Implement This Tomorrow
If you’re building a team or running a company, here’s what I’d advise:
Start with one project or decision:
Map out everyone it touches. Actually write their names down.
Then ask: Are they all in the room when we make decisions about this? Or are we doing the GM thing - having separate meetings and hoping it all works out?
Create your “screwdriver wall”:
What information should be visible to everyone? Where’s your central source of truth?
For us, it’s Slack. I say this all the time, “If it’s not in Slack, it doesn’t exist.” Everyone knows where to look.
Check your metrics:
Are you measuring seven things because someone said you should? Or are you measuring the two things that actually affect the customer?
Look at your incentives:
Who only gets paid when their department wins? Who gets paid when the customer wins?
Toyota figured this out decades ago: Everything is interconnected. The part affects the whole car. The whole car affects the customer. The customer affects your business.
You can’t optimize one piece and ignore (or at the expense of) the rest.
The Question That Changes Everything
Here’s what I come back to constantly:
If my marketing team hits their numbers but the company’s losing money, I don’t care about the marketing “success”.
That sounds harsh. But it’s the only way to build something that actually lasts.
Most companies talk about breaking down silos. But they still organize around departments. They still measure department success instead of customer outcomes.
Toyota taught me to organize around outcomes. To make everything visible. To put everyone in the same room.
It’s harder. It takes more coordination. It requires people to care about more than just their piece.
But when it works, you don’t waste time looking for the screwdriver.
You know exactly where it is.
If this helps, share it with your team. They might be optimizing their piece while the whole thing falls apart.
Follow me on LinkedIn for more frameworks from 40 years of building products: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveskillings/
Next week: What stage 4 cancer taught me about getting the right people in the same room.