Spring cleaning is coming early at Toyota, particularly among executives who may have felt a little too comfortable at the top. CEO Akio Toyoda is overhauling almost every division and reshuffling job responsibilities in the biggest corporate shakeup since the company’s unintended-acceleration debacle.
Toyota is preparing for “profound transformation” as automated driving, ride sharing, electrification, and a focus on software upset the traditional ways in which it builds and sells cars. Realizing it could become a complacent, bloated conglomerate like pre-bankruptcy General Motors, CEO Toyoda (pictured above on a Lexus yacht) is greasing the cogs in his giant corporation and throwing some out entirely.
“Surrounded by changes of unprecedented speed and scale, [Toyota] is aware it faces a ‘now or never’ situation in which not a moment can be spared,” Toyoda said in a lengthy statement. In total worldwide, 56 executives will be promoted to new roles, 121 will be transferred to other divisions, and 17 will be dismissed as of January 1. Among those leaving are Mark Templin, the U.S. vice president and general manager for Lexus who has championed the F-brand performance cars, and Tokuo Fukuichi, formerly Toyota’s chief designer and Lexus president, who just months ago was promoted to the luxury brand’s top marketing role. While the company announced in March that it would reduce its board of directors from 11 to nine and ush...