Respect Your Partners and Suppliers: A Lesson from Toyota
Welcome, everyone. I’m glad you’re here, and I hope you’re doing well and staying safe out there. Today I want to share a short but meaningful message about something that permanently shifted the way I look at construction partnerships: respecting our partners and suppliers at the same level we expect them to respect us.
What I Learned from Toyota
When I began studying the Toyota Production System, I knew they supported their suppliers in becoming lean. What I didn’t understand until I went to Japan myself was the depth of that commitment. At the Toyota museum and in conversations with former leaders, I learned that general managers spend most of their time not inside Toyota plants, but with the vendors who supply sub-assemblies.
The Toyota production line rarely needs intervention because the system works. Where they invest their time is upstream, ensuring the companies feeding into their system are supported, coached, and operating at a high standard. When a company partners with Toyota, they agree to full transparency. Toyota teams have access to observe processes, monitor data, and help their partners improve.
It is one of the most respectful and mutually beneficial business relationships I’ve ever seen. Toyota gets reliable, defect-free parts delivered in right-sized quantities at the right time, and suppliers become stronger and more capable businesses.
What This Means for Construction
If we truly respect our partners and suppliers, we won’t treat them as outsiders or adversaries. We won’t only call when something goes wrong. We won’t squeeze them financially and wonder why quality suffers. Respect means investing in their success.
High Street Ventures in Canada is a powerful example of this mindset. They put every foreman, superintendent, project manager, and lead person from their trade partners through a full High Street–funded training boot camp. Books, manuals, food, and the entire event are covered. On the jobsite they support their partners with fair financial practices, ongoing education, and a culture built around shared success.
They don’t say, “Do better.”
They say, “Let us help you get there.”
That is partnership. That is leadership.
A Call to Lead Differently
Just like Toyota’s general managers, we shouldn’t spend all our energy focused internally. If we want excellence on our projects, we have to intentionally support the companies who help us deliver them. When our partners thrive, our projects thrive. When we elevate others, we elevate the entire industry.
Thank you for reading.
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On we go