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Recommended Reading: Review of The Lean CEO by Jacob Stoller

December 7, 2016 by Joel A. Gross 1 Comment

The best Lean books for beginners from The Lean Book Shop

Recommended Reading is brought to you by The Lean Book Shop.  For the learner, not the critic, Recommended Reading provides a concise summary of the key themes, concepts and learning points that will add the greatest value to your Lean journey.  Featured books will include new and significant texts from the world of Lean thinking, as well as other hand-selected pieces that will drive the continuous improvement . . . of you.  

This month’s recommended reading from The Lean Book Shop:

The Lean CEO by Jacob Stoller

lean leadership books, lean leadership

The Lean CEO

The Value-Add of The Lean CEO

Disclosure:  I was provided with a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review. 

It’s well-established in the Lean community that most new Lean initiatives rarely meet expectations, and the natural response is to ask why?  Do so, and you’re likely to discover that one theme is cited above the rest:

[Read more…]

 

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Filed Under: Recommended Reading, The KaiZone Community Tagged With: jacob stoller, lean book, lean book shop, lean ceo, lean leadership, recommended reading

Review of Value Stream Mapping by Karen Martin and Mike Osterling

December 1, 2014 by Joel A. Gross Leave a Comment

Recommended Reading from The Lean Book Shop

Recommended Reading is brought to you by The Lean Book Shop.  Think book reviews, without all the fluff.  Recommended Reading presents a concise summary of the key themes, concepts and learning points that will contribute to your lean journey.  Featured books will include new and significant texts from the world of lean thinking, as well as other hand-selected pieces that will drive to the continuous improvement . . . of you.  

This month’s recommended reading from The Lean Book Shop:

Value Stream Mapping by Karen Martin and Mike Osterling

Amazon.com Link

Full Book Reviews

  • Gemba Panta Rei (Jon Miller)
  • Quality Digest
  • A Lean Journey (Tim McMahon)

The Value Add

I know that I’m a little late to the blog party of reviews on this text, but The KaiZone was more a dream of mine than a reality at the time when the book was published.  But at the risk of being stale, I believe the discussion over value stream mapping that has been popping up in recent months makes it worth revisiting. [Read more…]

 

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Filed Under: Recommended Reading, The KaiZone Community Tagged With: book review, recommended reading, value stream mapping

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

July 28, 2014 by Joel A. Gross Leave a Comment

Recommended Reading from The Lean Book Shop

Recommended Reading is brought to you by The Lean Book Shop.  Think book reviews, without all the fodder.  Recommended Reading presents a concise summary of the key themes, concepts and key learning points that will contribute to your learning journey.  Featured books will include new and significant texts from the world of lean thinking, as well as hand-selected pieces to contribute to the continuous improvement . . . of you.  

This month’s recommended reading from The Lean Book Shop:

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Amazon.com Link

Full Book Reviews

  • The New York Times
  • Business Week
  • The Economist

 Why You Need to Read It

Consider the following:

  • Why, despite the best of intentions, do some individuals struggle their entire lives to maintain a healthy lifestyle, while others can do so seemingly with little or no effort?
  • Why, despite massive investments of money, time and effort, do the vast majority of enterprises fail to successfully make the transition to a successful lean organization?

[Read more…]

 

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Filed Under: Recommended Reading, The KaiZone Community Tagged With: Charles Duhigg, habits, recommended reading, The Power of Habit

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

June 13, 2014 by Joel A. Gross 4 Comments

Recommended Reading from The Lean Book Shop

We interrupt the regularly scheduled Friday Favorites to bring you . . . something new!  I’m experimenting with a new content schedule for TheKaiZone, aimed at bringing the community a wider range of information that (hopefully) you will not find anywhere else in the wide world of Lean blogs.  As part of the changes, TheKaiZone Friday Favorites will now be posted on a biweekly basis – which should strengthen the quality of the curated articles significantly – with two new features filling the week-ending voids.

The first change to the Friday lineup is the Recommended Reading series brought to you by The Lean Book Shop.  Think book reviews, without all the fodder.  The posts are not meant to be full-fledged book reviews; I let the critiques to the experts (but will provide associated links in case you are interested in that sort of thing).  Recommended Reading will present a concise summary of the key themes and concepts in the selected text, as well as the key learning points that will contribute to your Lean journey.

The books that I review will fall into two distinct categories.  First, I intend to keep you up-to-date and informed of all the new releases within the world of Lean and continuous improvement publications.  And second, I will highlight books that I believe you will find useful on your journey, but which may not necessarily be written directly about Lean-related topics.  As the tag line to the Lean Book Shop says, Recommended Reading is dedicated to the continuous improvement . . . of you!

So, without further ado, I present the first post in the Recommended Reading series:

[Read more…]

 

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Filed Under: Recommended Reading, The KaiZone Community Tagged With: cognitive biases, daniel kahneman, lean book, recommended reading

The Top 10 Lean Books of All Time

May 26, 2014 by Joel A. Gross 22 Comments

I’m going to share a secret with you.  Growing up, I always dreamed of owning a bookstore.  Actually, I still do.  Not one of the big-chain behemoths located in a busy shopping mall smack dab in the middle of suburbia.  No way!  I wanted a small, cozy shop somewhere off the beaten path, where customers could curl up with a good book and a hot cup of coffee.  A place that people would go to learn something that inspired them, to have a good conversation with a complete stranger, or just to escape the stress of daily life . . . even if only for a little while.    That’s my True North.

Today, I’ve taken the first step in that direction by creating The Lean Book Shop @ TheKaiZone.  Although there’s no caffeine and the ambiance leaves much to be desired, I can promise you that the selection cannot be beat!

There  are literally hundreds, if not thousands of books out there related to the topics of Lean and continuous improvement.  I know because I’ve spent a good majority of my adult life reading most of them.  Unfortunately, the vast majority are frankly not very good.  There are many self-proclaimed “senseis” out there claiming to have unlocked the secrets to Lean success .  In reality, these so-called “experts” are nothing more than Lean consultants with very little proven, real-world success re-packaging outdated and ineffective approaches as the next best thing.  As Mark Graban says, that”s L.A.M.E. not Lean.

Good Lean advice can be hard to find.  It’s especially daunting for those just starting off on their Lean journey.  I’ve seen it many times.  One bad source and the path starts off completely in the wrong direction.  Instead of pursuing True North, you may find yourself here.

This is where The Lean Book Shop can help.  I’ve personally hand-selected what I consider to be the absolute best texts ever written on the subjects of Lean and Continuous Improvement.  I’ve personally read every book in the shop and I stand behind each one.  You won’t find every Lean and continuous improvement book – for example: this, this or this – just those that I know you can trust to help you on your learning journey.

Speaking of trust, I want to fully disclose that I have partnered with Amazon.com* as part of their affiliate advertising program to bring you The Lean Book Shop.  Any link to books referenced on this page, or other pages on TheKaiZone.com, will refer you to Amazon.com, where you get the exact same purchase price as all other amazon.com users do.  Please refer to the About Me page for further details.

To celebrate the grand opening of The Lean Book Shop @ TheKaiZone, I’ve put together a top 10 list of the best books ever written on the topics of Lean and continuous improvement.  I define “best” in terms of the book’s contribution (the degree to which I feel the book has contributed to current thinking within the Lean world) and relevance (the degree to which I find myself referring back to the text on my own Lean journey).

Note that the list simply represents my own personal opinions and preferences. Your list will likely be different and I encourage you to share it with The KaiZone Community in the comments section below!

Drum roll, please!  Without further ado, I present to you the top 10 Lean books of all time:

10.  Creating a Kaizen Culture (2013) by Jon Miller, Mike Wroblewski and Jaime Villafuerte

Amazon.com Link

Kaizen.  Culture.  Adaptiveness.  Words that are not easy to define in tangible terms, and even more difficult to achieve or impact in the real-world.  However, Creating a Kaizen Culture takes these concepts out of the nebulous world and provides practical, tangible guidance for changing the most important pieces of the Lean organization . . . the people.

9.  Gemba Kaizen (1997) by Masaaki Imai

Amazon.com Link

With the publication of his book Kaizen in 1986, Masaaki Imai brought the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement to light.  In the sequel, Gemba Kaizen, Mr. Imai enlightens the world to another core Lean concept: the gemba.  By combining a focus on incremental, small improvements with a thorough understanding of “the real place”, the book has contributed significantly to the mindset of the present-day Lean thinker.  As a bonus, the text includes several case studies from real-world application of the gemba kaizen approach.

8.  The Lean Turnaround (2012) by Art Byrne

Amazon.com Link

Very few people on the planet can claim the level of real-world Lean success that Art Byrne can.  Perhaps, no other book provides such a deep dive into the strategic nature of Lean or the role of senior leaders in driving change.  Certainly, none that can back up the theory and discussion with such dramatic and concrete results as Mr. Byrne and his time spent as CEO of Wiremold.  This book is a must-read for any executive looking to create and sustain a successful Lean organization.

7.  The High-Velocity Edge (formerly Chasing the Rabbit, 2008) by Steven Spear

Amazon.com Link

What sets dynamic organizations apart from their competition?  From the same author that wrote the seminal article Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System, Steven Spear goes beyond the tangible and the technical to uncover the underlying capabilities of high-velocity organizations.  Through direct observation of successful organizations such as Toyota, Alcoa and the United States Nuclear Navy, Spear identifies the four critical factors that fuel the continuous improvement of today’s complex systems: system design, problem solving, knowledge sharing and people development.  

6.  The Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production (1988) by Taiichi Ohno

Amazon.com Link

An view of the historical rise of Toyota manufacturing through the eyes of its primary contributor: Mr. Taiichi Ohno.  Outlining the important social and economic forces that drove the creation of what we now dub the Toyota Production System, the book focuses primarily on the history and the thinking from which the system evolved. That the book does not provide a deep dive in to the technical aspects of the system is irrelevant, as it subtly teaches a much greater lesson to present day Lean thinkers:  Lean organizations can learn – and profit – much more from Toyota by focusing on the thinking that created the system than they can by copying the system itself.

5.  The Machine that Changed the World (1990) by James Womack, Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos

Amazon.com Link

The book that coined the term “Lean” based on the outcomes of more than 5 years of study of the Japanese automobile industry by MIT.  Womack, Jones and Roos thoroughly document the whole of the Toyota Production System, pinpoint the advantages of Lean manufacturing over the prevailing mass-production system used in the western world at the time, and correctly predicted the rise of Lean manufacturing principles, not just in automobile manufacturing, but in any value-creating endeavor.  

4.  Out of the Crisis (1986) by W. Edwards Deming

Amazon.com Link

Although not necessarily Lean-centric, in Out of the Crisis, Dr. Deming provides the foundation for many core components of Lean management systems.  Deming uses his now infamous 14 Points to implore management to place long-term sustainability ahead of meeting short-term financial incentives through increasing product quality and by involving all employees in the efforts to transform the organization.  Sound familiar?  Also, the book represents the first appearance in print of the primary framework for Lean problem solving: the Shewhart Cycle, also known as Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA).

3.  The Toyota Way (2003) by Jeffrey Liker

Amazon.com Link

Prior to the publication of the Toyota Way, the vast majority of the Lean literature focused on describing the tangible, technical aspects of the Toyota Production System.  Without understanding the accompanying business philosophies and management principles, most organizations that attempted to mimic Toyota failed to generate the same – if any – level of results.  In The Toyota Way, Dr. Liker shifted the focus away from superficial tools and techniques of the production system and onto the 14 key principles that define the Toyota style of management.  In doing so, the book was the first to articulate the true source of Toyota’s success in a format available and understandable to the masses.

2. A Study of the Toyota Production System: From an Industrial Engineering Viewpoint (1st english translation 1980, re-translated 1989) by Shigeo Shingo**

Amazon.com Link

The now famous “green book” that started it all.  With this book, Dr. Shingo provides the master study of all aspects of the production system dubbed “just-in-time”.  Nearly a decade before the publication of The Machine the Changed the World, the book was the first text translated into English to discuss many of the concepts of the Toyota Production System such as poka-yoke (mistake-proofing), heijunka (leveling), standardized work, and the 7 wastes.  

1.  Toyota Kata (2009) by Mike Rother

Amazon.com Link

This may not be the best book with which to start your Lean journey, but it is certainly the direction you should head in which to finish.  Only those who have struggled to find Lean success will fully appreciate the power of the kata methodology.  Of all the texts on Lean and continuous improvement, Toyota Kata achieves what no other book before it has fully accomplished: translating Lean into a set of simple, practical routines, organized around improvement and coaching, that can be readily and effectively practiced at all levels of an organization.  Rother cuts down many long-standing fallacies about the practice of Lean, such as the misunderstanding of common Lean “tools” and the misconception of waste elimination.  In doing so, Mr. Rother places the focus right where it should be: on the development every person in the organization through a habit of problem solving and the achievement of continuous improvement.  

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There you have it!  The Top 10 Lean books of all time, as determined by The KaiZone.  Disagree?  Then let us know!  Please use the comments section below to share your own personal top 10!

And don’t forget to check out The Lean Book Shop @ TheKaiZone for all of your Lean, continuous improvement and self improvement needs!

* Disclosure: TheKaiZone.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

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Filed Under: Recommended Reading, The KaiZone Community Tagged With: books, ohno, recommended reading, shingo, the lean book shop

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