How Hassan Jameel Learned to Lead From the Stockyard, Not the Boardroom

Hassan Jameel remembers standing in front of a car-cleaning operative with a stopwatch and a notepad, logging every movement the worker made during the day, including bathroom breaks and trips across the garage to collect a tool.

That was not an exercise in micromanagement. It was his introduction to kaizen.

Jameel, vice chairman of Saudi Arabia for Abdul Latif Jameel, spent time working in Toyota’s domestic kaizen division in 2004, becoming the first non-Japanese person to join the unit. The experience, he has said, reshaped how he understands both business and daily life.

“Continuous improvement, to me as an individual, is not only about improving oneself every day,” Jameel said. “It’s about how you build that mentality into your lifestyle, so it becomes automatic.”

Toyota introduced kaizen as a formal operating philosophy at Abdul Latif Jameel when the companies began their distribution partnership in Saudi Arabia in the 1950s. But Jameel says he did not grasp its depth until he was immersed in the Toyota headquarters environment in Japan.

He recounts a formative exchange with a supervisor during that placement. After identifying that an operative lost six minutes each day walking to collect tools, Jameel dismissed the finding as minor. His supervisor disagreed. Eight technicians losing six minutes each day adds up to more than half a working day every week.

“That’s when I really began to understand what continuous improvement was all about,” Jameel said. “It’s not about big, expensive ideas that someone at the top thinks is going to transform the workplace.”

That philosophy now runs through Abdul Latif Jameel’s operations. The company runs an internal program called Best in Town, a kaizen initiative built on Toyota’s framework, with teams across multiple countries working to embed continuous improvement into daily operations. More than 150 delegates from Best in Town teams worldwide gathered for a regional conference in Saudi Arabia in 2023.

Jameel has also cited genchi genbutsu, the Toyota practice of visiting the front line directly, as central to his management approach. Leaders who observe processes firsthand, he argues, make better decisions than those who rely solely on reports. That ethos was on display at a recent celebration of excellence where Abdul Latif Jameel brought together teams from across its operations to recognize achievements driven by frontline initiative.