books

A long time ago I was running an off-shift in operations. Late at night, we didn’t have any resources coming to train the team, and so if we wanted to learn, we were on our own. We began reading and applying books, beginning with two books from Kiyoshi Suzuki, The

The idea that just as doctors practice medicine we must practice lean is the premise of a book I contributed to called Practicing Lean which was edited by Mark Graban. We must be wiling to evolve our practices and learn as we move forward.   Order a copy of the book today

In Part 1: The evolution of lean, we explored how our insight into lean has evolved. In this part, we explore why behaviors are so important to lean. The most important aspect of lean evolution has been the acknowledgement of the role of behaviors as central to a lean organization.

You are a talented engineer. You’ve lead technical research and product development teams. But running a team is one thing. Now you’re promoted to a role where leading is just about all you need to do. That’s a great time to pick up a book from my friend Stephanie Olexa

There are 1,000s of leadership books out there. And for good reason. Leadership is one of the secret weapons of success whether it be in lean transformation in a Fortune 50 company or running a 3-person startup or running a high school science class. It’s really far too important to

Lean means getting rid of managers, developing a flat organizational structure, and abdicating all responsibilities to the front line employees. Right? Too many people just read that without twitching. But it’s wrong. That’s not lean at all. Before going too far, lean also doesn’t mean adding organizational layers. There is

I just completed reading Startup CEO by Matt Blumberg, CEO for the successful startup Return Path. Overall, this was an excellent book for a first-time CEO. For someone with more experience, there will be many sections of the book that is unnecessary. But beyond the more tactical advice, there is

IndustryWeek Editor-in-Chief Patricia Panchak wrote a blog post that caught my eye: The Best Books on Enlightened Workforce Management. Of course, enlightened is a tough word because it can mean different things to different people. Here’s her list of what she calls “old faithfuls”. I love Max DePree, some of

We are still very proud of our book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean, that has done very well over the past few years. The book publishing world is changing, very rapidly. I’ve had one of the big publishers ask me about doing another book. I’m not ready for that yet.

Yesterday we lost a legendary guru in the field of continuous improvement, Eli Goldratt (1948 – 2011). Goldratt is most famous for the creation of the Theory of Constraints. His landmark book, The Goal, is something that every single person trying to improve any process should read. Over 3 million