Ford still leads the industry in recalls. It also just ranked #1 among mass-market brands in J.D. Power's 2026 Initial Quality Study, the best year-over-year quality improvement the study has seen since 1997.
CEO Jim Farley credits a specific habit for the turnaround, something he picked up working at Toyota decades ago: the Gemba walk.
I watched very senior people at Toyota go to the line, find problems, go to the operator... and then try to problem-solve to help the team.
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Get Out of the Office. Go Find the Dirty Corner.
Gemba means "the actual place." The practice is simple to describe and genuinely hard to do consistently: leaders leave their desks, go watch the actual work happen, and ask questions instead of relying on reports someone else wrote.
That last part matters more than it sounds. Reports tell you what someone thinks you want to hear. Standing on the floor tells you what's actually happening, dirty corners included, and once a leader sees one, they tend to reach for a mop.
Farley's Walks Changed Focus Over Seven Years
Farley says his own Gemba walks evolved deliberately. Early on, he focused on culture and safety: did people feel safe at work, did quality matter as much as output. Over time, as those fundamentals took hold, his questions shifted toward engineering, supply chain, and organizational design.
That progression is worth noting on its own. A Gemba walk isn't a single fix, it's an ongoing practice that changes shape as the underlying problems change shape.
What a Gemba Walk Looks Like on a Dealership Floor
Here's a version any GM could actually run this month, not as an abstract leadership philosophy, but as a literal schedule:
Half a day detailing cars.
Half a day turning wrenches in service.
A full day writing service tickets.
A complete walkthrough of an actual deal, from greeting to delivery, the way a salesperson experiences it, relying on their manager the way a salesperson has to.
A stretch of time answering phones in the BDC.
Do that rotation, and the dirty corners find you. Not metaphorically, actual friction points nobody's been reporting because nobody asked.
What This Means for Your Store
You don't need seven years of refinement to start. Pick one rotation this month, even a single day in one department you don't normally set foot in, and go watch instead of asking for a summary.
The goal isn't to catch people doing something wrong.
It's to see what your own reports have been quietly filtering out, the same gap Farley spent seven years closing at a company with a very different scale of problems than yours, using the exact same tool.
